The Cowboys quarterback said, “What’s up Dak? Dak Lopez,” smiling into the camera. “It’s Dak Prescott. I love your name. I just want to say stay strong.”
Prescott sent the video to Dak shortly after doctors diagnosed Dak Lopez with a rare form of leukemia.
“You’ve got me in your corner,” said Prescott. “The Cowboys are in your corner!”
Dak Lopez then began chemo- a treatment. But he needed a transplant—the only cure.
In May of 2022, CBS News Texas met Dak’s dad as bone marrow drives were underway in Dallas to find the perfect match. But the Lopez’s soon discovered that Dak is at a disadvantage – one that has nothing to do with his health.
“Doctors told us that it was more about you know, the ethnicity of, you know, where we came from our culture and, and all in all, that played a big factor in finding a match for Dak, so we actually had drives from where we’re from- El Paso, Texas,” explained Dak’s dad Adam Lopez.
“We had some drives out there in El Paso in the hopes of trying to find a match for Dak.”
“We have to increase awareness,” DKSM spokesperson Corey Sully said. “And awareness starts with someone who looks like the donors.”
DKMS organizes bone marrow drives for those in need.
“I volunteered years ago to show the potential African American, Hispanic, Asian American just minorities, you know, what does a diverse donor look like,” said Sully.
DKMS provided the I-Team with the following chart showing the probabilities of finding an unrelated matching donor.
Sully understands the hesitation from donors. “There’s a lot of fear in the community. I can speak in the African American community. There’s a lot of fear about the process itself.”
It is a process he knows well and one that, he said, is relatively simple.
You donate a cheek swab to join the registry. In 2020, Sully’s cheek swab matched the marrow of a 46-year-old perfectly. Sully said he then donated blood giving the patient three more years of life.
“It was two sticks. It was one the left arm one on the right arm. They process the stem cells through a process called medical officious and it took me about four to five hours to complete.”
Back to little Dak, despite five drives, his dad said they were not fortunate enough to find a perfect match, but he still saw a positive.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to find a match for Dak. The good thing about it is though, that we got so many new people on the registry, from the Hispanic culture we got a lot, all because of Dak.”
And fortunately, one year ago, doctors decided Dak could have a transplant from a partial match — his dad!
“We’re very grateful right now to say that he recently had his last biopsy in early September, and it showed no disease,” said Lopez.
Dak just celebrated the end of chemo. He’s back at school, in kindergarten and all smiles.
Lopez, Sully and DKMS are now urgently calling for more minority donors.
With more donations and diversity in the bone marrow bank, more superheroes like Dak will have the very best fighting chances to sit around on Sundays cheering on their heroes.
DKMS frequently holds cheek-swabbing drives. They’re quick and painless.
