A halftime celebration of the gift of life
- Laurie D. Babcock
- December 7, 2024
- Student Life
- Contributors: Sarah Passey, Photos
7 – minute read
The Florida Gulf Coast University women’s basketball team scored a victory over New College of Florida Dec. 4 — but it wasn’t the only win of the night. Amid cheers at a heartwarming halftime celebration in Alico Arena, an FGCU student finally met the man whose life she saved last year.
Thanks to a partnership between FGCU’s Service-Learning & Civic Engagement office and the Gift of Life Marrow Registry, Zoe Horowitz donated peripheral blood stem cells in 2023 that saved Kevin Mitchell’s life. The two had spoken by phone after her donation but never met face to face until they were introduced in the arena. Federal regulations require transplant donors and recipients to wait a year before meeting.
“All I wanted to do was reach out, but for all I knew, he could have been in another country,” Horowitz said. “I think it’s ironic that he was in Florida — he’s just been only a few hours away.”
Their emotional meeting at half-court highlighted the life-saving impact of FGCU’s partnership with Gift of Life, a nonprofit that has been a community partner with the university since 2018.
A chance to walk down the aisle
A psychology major, Horowitz was in her first year in college in fall 2022 when she learned about Gift of Life and swabbed her cheek to join the registry. A few weeks later, she was notified she had a match. The following February, she donated peripheral blood stem cells that saved Mitchell’s life.
Since then, she’s thought a lot about his life and family. “When I found out that he has two daughters and one of them is getting married, I felt so grateful that she’s able to have her dad at her wedding. That’s something I won’t be able to have.”
Her father, Marc Horowitz, died a few months after she donated her cells. On her future wedding day, she imagines she’ll be thinking about how her gift to Mitchell allowed him to accompany his daughter Megan down the aisle.
“The amount of joy that that will bring me is enough. I know if my dad could be there, he would. But someone else is going to be able to enjoy that moment,” she said. “I wouldn’t be opposed to having Kevin walk me down the aisle. I would love that.”
Horowitz’s mother, Ellen Gotthoffer, shares that sentiment. Gotthoffer was courtside, along with her aunt and uncle, Jean and Robert Lewis, for the momentous meetup.
Horowitz stood at half-court as Mitchell came in from the sideline and the game announcer related their dramatic story to the crowd. Mitchell broke into a jog and the two embraced for the first time, with huge grins on their faces.
“He gives such good hugs,” she said tearfully. They posed for pictures with Azul, FGCU’s mascot, and their families as basketball fans clapped and cried.
A match on and off the court
Mitchell, a pilot with Southwest Airlines for 23 years, has been grounded since his initial cancer diagnosis in 2022.
“The doctors told me I had one to two years to live if I chose to do nothing. So I said, ‘Well, I choose to do something.’ They said the only known cure is a stem cell transplant.”
His family members were tested, and one was a 50% match. “My brother came back as four out of eight markers. Which isn’t terrible, but it wasn’t the best.”
Through Gift of Life, Horowitz was discovered as an almost perfect match: 11 out of 12 markers for human leukocyte antigens (HLA) and an eight out of eight for a high-resolution match.
Her blood stem cell donation gives Mitchell another chance to take to the sky.
“The greater the match, the less chance of any rejection. So, thanks to Zoe, I haven’t had any complications, and I was out of the hospital sooner than expected,” he said.
Supporting Mitchell as he met his donor was his wife, Mary Ann, and their youngest daughter, Kellen. The family had driven down from their home near Orlando. Watching over Facetime on Kellen’s phone was eldest daughter Megan from Cleveland, Ohio, where she works as a pediatric oncology research coordinator.
Thinking back to 2022 when Mitchell was diagnosed and remembering how they worried that their own daughters might lose their dad to cancer was difficult. “Both my wife and I lost our fathers when we were in our 20s, so it really hit us,” Mitchell said. Knowing Horowitz’s father died recently, Mitchell offered to escort her on her wedding day.
“Oh, yeah, definitely I’ll be there. If Zoe needs me to stand in, yeah. I wouldn’t be here without Zoe.”
All for a good cause
After the halftime show, the two families took time to get to know one another, as well as some of the folks proud to have made the heartwarming moment happen.
Their supporters included Tricia Miller, the instructor of the 2022 “University Transition” course where Horowitz first learned about and joined the registry, and Traci Ackerman, manager of strategic partnerships for Gift of Life. For Ackerman and her colleagues, “every swab counts.” A cheek swab — quick, simple and painless — is the first step in potentially saving a life. It adds a new person to the stem cell registry, increasing the odds that someone battling a life-threatening condition like Mitchell’s will find their match. Attendees at the basketball game were able to join the registry by stopping at two swab tables set up at the arena.
Ackerman credits Justin Fitzgerald, director of community engagement in Service-Learning & Civic Engagement, with spreading the word at FGCU about her organization. Fitzgerald and Jessica Rhea, senior director of experiential learning and career development at FGCU, were also in attendance at the basketball game.
In 2018, Fitzgerald invited Gift of Life to the Service-Learning Fair, an annual event that introduces students to dozens of service-learning opportunities with nonprofits and government agencies. FGCU is one of the only public institutions to make service-learning a graduation requirement for all undergraduate students.
In the past six years, there have been 21 matches and three lifesaving transplants thanks to the efforts of FGCU staff, faculty and students. By hosting swab tables at campus events and integrating the registry into class discussions, FGCU ensures that its community understands the life-saving potential of a simple swab.
Mitchell knows it firsthand.
“Zoe’s blood is in me,” he said. “That’s how [a stem cell transplant] works — her stem cells are making my blood. If I prick my finger, that’s Zoe’s blood. She’s a part of me.”
