Courtesy of Seth Bornstein
Seth Bornstein (l.) and his “stem cell brother” David Espinosa, in New Mexico. The two had never spent any time together after Bornstein saved Espinosa’s life with a bone marrow donation.
This one is a real swab story.
Seth Bornstein is accustomed to helping Queens businesses. As head of the Queens Economic Development Corp., he oversees an agency that aids many enterprises.
Bornstein now has the gratitude of a New Mexico man for a gift that goes far beyond the assistance he doles out to merchants and companies.
That would be the gift of life. Borstein made a bone-marrow donation four years ago, and the ramifications of his generous act are still being felt today.
“I love him. Here’s a fellow that saved my life,” said David Espinosa, 70, of Albuquerque, the recipient of Bornstein’s bone marrow. “What more can I say? I’d do anything for him.”
Espinosa was so grateful that he invited Bornstein to the southwest for Columbus Day weekend, where the two finally got acquainted in person.
“This was the first time we spent together,” said Espinosa, a retired probation officer. “The more we talked, the more we realized we had a lot in common.”
The collision of their lives started shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when Bornstein entered the bone-marrow registry at the urging of his daughter, Kerry, who had a friend diagnosed with a blood disorder.
It slipped his mind until 2009, when he received a phone call. Eight years later, they had someone in need.
“I had completely forgotten about it until they called,” said Bornstein. “You never know when a match will come up.”
Espinosa had been diagnosed with advanced leukemia and faced a grim prognosis.
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“I was pretty sick,” he recalled. “The doctors told me I had two weeks to live if I did nothing.”
Bornstein, meanwhile, spent the next few months undergoing a battery of tests that led up to a day-long transfusion.
Now, Espinosa is a robust septuagenarian who golfs, works out and, most importantly, is completely cancer-free.
The two men have chatted regularly, via email and phone, over the past three years.
“I call him my stem-cell brother,” Bornstein joked.
Bornstein said that he hopes that more people will get swabbed, enter the registry and not be intimidated by the idea of donating bone marrow.
“It can lead to great things,” he said. “It is better than giving money to anything else.”
Officials with Delete Blood Cancer, an advocacy group, said many of those afflicted with a blood disease don’t receive a life-saving donation because there aren’t enough potential candidates.
Almost half of the people that need a bone-marrow donation don’t receive one. There are only 11 million registered donors nationwide, a majority of whom are white.
“The current registry is not robust enough for the kinds of people that will need it,” said spokewoman Tara Schuh.
Espinosa was one of the lucky ones — and he’s well aware that he beat the odds.
“There’s hardly a day goes by that I don’t think about Seth,” said Espinosa.
idejohn@nydailynews.com
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