By Leighton Ginn
The campaign to find a bone-marrow match for Los Angeles woman Krissy Kobata continues to attract famous supporters.
On Aug. 17, boxing great Manny Pacquiao and New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton tweeted their support of Kobata.
Pacquiao, the Boxer of the Decade and a senator in the Philippines, Tweeted out a link to the Asian American Sports Journalists story on Kobata, and followed up by Tweeting a link to Be The Match’s website. Be The Match is a national bone-marrow registry that also sends out kits for people to test themselves and register.
Also joining the action was Payton, who coached the Saints to the Super Bowl title in 2010, when they beat the Indianapolis Colts 31-17.
Payton is represented by agent Don Yee, who is a family friend of Kobata.
“Don Yee, my agent, with the help of Sports Task Force is spreading the word about Krissy Kobata,” Payton posted, along with the same link to the Facebook story.
The Sports Task Force, part of the Asian American Journalist Association, began spreading the word of Kobata’s search.
http://sportstaskforce.com/japanese-american-krissy-kobata-desperately-needs-bone-marrow-donor/
Half Japanese, half Caucasian, Kobata has been searching for a donor for a decade, but her ethnicity makes it difficult to find a match.
Yee, who established the Jimmie & Suey Fong Yee Scholarship in honor of his parents, asked the Sports Task Force to help share the story of Kobata’s situation.
The group’s unofficial page, Asian American Sports Journalists, published a story on July 29 about Kobata. Through social media, the post had reached 51,805 on Facebook the morning of Aug. 14.
Later that day, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, also one of Yee’s clients, posted on his Facebook page about Kobata.
About an hour later, actress Chloe Bennet of ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. sent out five Tweets in a row about Kobata.
Within 24 hours, Kobata’s Facebook post had reached over 1 million more people. Currently, the post has reached 1,170,526 on Aug. 17. There was also a story posted in USA Today’s For The Win.
To learn more about Krissy, go to teamkrissy.com
If you want to register as a bone marrow donor, go to https://join.bethematch.org/teamkrissy
Ginn & Topics 