ESCONDIDO, Calif. (KGTV) — As Escondido Union High School District students return to school on Tuesday, one teenager, set to start 9th grade with his friends, isn't there yet.
14-year-old Chase Riehl is tough and has a positive attitude.
"It's very hard to find donors. I understand that," Riehl said.
Riehl is battling leukemia and needs a bone marrow donor.
"Sometimes you feel awful. Sometimes, you feel good enough to go do something that is fun for you. Like, sometimes I go with my dad to the driving range and hit some golf balls," he told ABC 10News.
Those are the good days. The bad days, though, tire Riehl and keep him out of school and often at doctor appointments.
ABC 10 News first met Riehl's mom, Sunny, in November 2023.
Ten months later, Riehl has been on and off treatment, which includes a mix of tests and medications doctors can throw at the disease, hoping to help him.
At one point, there was a miracle: his cancer was gone. It would have been a great time for him to get a bone marrow transplant. For Riehl to qualify for the bone marrow transplant, he needs to be cancer-free. But that donor has not been found.
"My understanding is there's already 32 million people in the database, and he didn't match with any of them," Sunny Riehl said. "But he was able to walk with his eighth-grade class. It was a special, special thing for him to be able to participate in."
But then that miracle was ripped from them again.
"He had another aspirate (test) just last month, and it showed that there's a small percentage of cancer in his central nervous system and in his marrow," Sunny Riehl said.
Riehl felt well enough to sit down with ABC 10 in his backyard and described his trip to the Super Bowl this year.
"It was awesome," he said with a smile.
Riehl is 75% white and a quarter Filipino. His best chance at a life-saving match is someone with a similar ethnic profile. But that quarter Filipino has complicated things.
Be the Match, a Minneapolis nonprofit that runs a national marrow donor program is experiencing a shortage of Filipino donors in its registry.
"There's no donor registry in the Philippines. It's harder for Filipino patients to find a match," said Erica Swevilla, a spokesperson for Be the Match in November.
His mother has given him bone marrow before, but it was only a 50% match. Still, his doctors are looking at using her marrow again.
"He does have a genetic marker that makes it a little bit more challenging even with that on top of it," his mother said.
While Riehl knows how difficult this is, and the outlook for finding someone is rare, he's still asking others to get swabbed. He hopes he's helping other leukemia patients find a match, too.
"I hope there are people that are luckier than me and have more options to get their donors," he said.
If you want to see if you're a match for Riehl or someone else -- you can register for a free swab kit with the National Marrow Donor Program here.
