A perfect match

In the fall of 2014, first-year student Bethany Warren (’18) attended a seminar on campus on the virtues of donating bone marrow. She was moved to act by what she heard at the Be the Match event encouraging students to join the National Marrow Donor Program by donating and potentially saving the life of someone with leukemia.

Meanwhile, three hours away in southern Virginia, Caroline Laughorn (’23) was in the eighth grade, praying that she would stay healthy. The leukemia that had snatched away much of her childhood was in remission, and she was looking forward to starting high school and living a normal life.

Little did Warren know that her simple, generous act would someday save the life of young Laughorn.

The next four years went very well for Warren. “JMU was the best four years of my life,” she claims, without hesitation. She became heavily involved on campus, met friends she’s close with to this day, and mostly forgot that she’d ever joined the bone-marrow registry during her first year.

Life, however, took a challenging turn for Laughorn. At 15, she relapsed, and her high-school years were full of punishing therapies, extended hospital stays and, most definitely, not living the normal, healthy life she and her family prayed for so passionately. Once, when she was hospitalized during the throes of her relapse, she developed pneumonia, and the doctors prepared the family for the worst because she was so weak. “I was scared to go to sleep because I wasn’t sure I would wake up,” she remembered. But with determination, faith and several medical interventions, Laughorn recovered, and her leukemia again went into remission. She began to dream about going to college. As fate would have it, her heart was set on JMU. “It was always only JMU. I didn’t apply to any other school.”

Laughorn and Warren pose with the “little Jimmy” statue during their first meeting on campus March 1.

Warren graduated in the spring of 2018 and moved on with her life. Laughorn arrived on campus the following fall. She almost didn’t make it to JMU, as she relapsed again just before starting her first year. Her doctors began discussing a bone-marrow transplant. While she was already in the registry, there was no guarantee that Laughorn would ever find a match. Plus, the transplant itself is a rough procedure. Survival is not guaranteed.

To cope with what had become a dogged specter in her life, Laughorn decided on her purpose at JMU: She became heavily involved in promoting campus causes related to leukemia. “When I got to JMU, I got involved with Relay for Life. We did bone-marrow drives and stuff like that. Then I started Dukes Against Childhood Cancer.”

Fast-forward to 2023. An exact, 10-out-of-10 match for Laughorn was located on the bone-marrow registry, and the transplant was scheduled for Dec. 23 that year. She checked the box giving the registry permission to send her contact information to her donor. Warren had checked the same box about nine years earlier. The transplant surgery was a success, and thus began a yearlong waiting period between the procedure and the registry’s connection of donor and recipient.

Warren found out first. She received an email saying that her recipient was reaching out and wanted contact. “So, I got the email, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, here’s her information.’ I saw Virginia as her address, and I was like, ‘No way, that’s crazy.’” With millions of people in the National Marrow Donor Program, the chance of a donor and recipient having the slightest connection is infinitesimal. “Before I texted her, I went on Facebook to look her up, and it said that she went to JMU. I freaked out. I immediately texted all my JMU friends.”

Not only did Laughorn and Warren both graduate from JMU; they both lived in Gifford Hall.

Once Warren let the news sink in, she texted Laughorn.

“First when she texted me, I saw it was a Virginia number,” Laughorn recounted. “I was freaking out because [it was] Virginia. Then she texted she went to JMU, too. And then I really was freaking out. I was shaking. It was just crazy.”

Their story blew up on social media, with members of JMU Nation celebrating Warren’s and Laughorn’s beautiful, deep connection and their shared love of their alma mater. While on campus in early March to meet in-person for the first time, Warren said, “I think my favorite comment on the post about us finally finding out who each other is was ‘Dukes hold doors and save lives.’ I thought that was a great line. It’s true!”