Growing up in northern Virginia, Lynne Haupt adored her older brother.
Jonathan taught her how to tie her shoes and how to ride a bike. When he started playing lacrosse, she made him teach her that, too. Two years after Jonathan moved to Baltimore to attend Goucher College, Lynne enrolled at Johns Hopkins University, only 10 minutes away.
"I knew he was special," says Lynne, 30, a Brookline resident. "But now, it's kind of coming around to bite him."
Jonathan, 32, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia in March. After intense chemotherapy failed to stop the disease, doctors told his family last month he needed a bone marrow transplant.
Even with more than 13 million people on the bone marrow registries around the world, doctors have not yet found a perfect match for Jonathan's bone marrow type, she said. And with just weeks left to find that match in time for a life-saving transplant, Lynne and her family - including Newton resident Rhoda Ben-Gai have hastily organized a string of registration drives to help Jonathan - and others like him - find a donor.
Just five months ago, Lynne and her fiance, Brian Hoffman, 34, were busy planning their wedding.
"Remember when the hardest thing in our life was trying to find out where we'd get married," she joked with Hoffman.
That took a back seat on March 2. During the first day of training in California for a new marketing position, Lynne received a text from Jonathan's wife, Courtney, that Jonathan was in the emergency room.
For a couple of weeks, Jonathan had been fighting a cold that wouldn't go away. But aside from that, the former college lacrosse player was healthy and living an active lifestyle.
When Lynne called her sister-in-law, she was shocked to hear that her brother might have cancer.
She had planned on staying at the training for a week, but after talking with Courtney, she got on a plane to Washington, D.C. The trip that night was tough, she remembered.
"Most people sleep on a red-eye," she said. "I was crying the whole time, in the middle seat between two strangers."
At Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Md., it was Jonathan helping her calm down, she recalls.
"I'm upset, and Jonathan's comforting me," Lynne said. "He's giving me a hug, saying: 'It's going to be OK, we're going to fight this, it's going to be fine.' I'm still his little sister."
Days later, doctors diagnosed Jonathan with acute myelogenous leukemia. He underwent three months of painful chemotherapy, which doctors told him gave him an 80 percent chance of beating the cancer.
But on June 12, Jonathan got the news that the treatment hadn't worked. The cancer was still there, and a bone marrow transplant was his best option.
Soon after, Jonathan gave Lynne permission to make his story public.
"Once we had the go-ahead, it was like all-systems go," she said. "I'm in marketing strategy now, Brian's a graphic designer, we have friends that are in IT ... friends that do Web design - and within, literally, a day, everything was out there."
In addition to a Team Haupt homepage telling Jonathan's story and promoting upcoming registration drives, there's a Twitter account and a Facebook group with more than 1,200 members. At four Team Haupt registration drives last week, more than 350 people added their names and blood marrow profiles to the 7 million people in the Be the Match national blood marrow registry.
Speaking by phone from his bed at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Jonathan said he's proud of the way his sister has taken action to register potential donors.
"She's really stepped up to the plate," he said. "It helps many people, not just me."
Lynne Haupt is hoping more than 300 people will turn out to Sunday's drive at the Newton Jewish Community Center, 333 Nahanton St. The 10-minute registration process is an easy opportunity to possibly make "the biggest gift of all," either for Jonathan or for another cancer patient, she said.
Doctors have said that Jonathan needs a transplant as soon as possible, and since it takes four weeks for the results to come back from a test, Lynne knows she is racing against time to find a match.
But as her brother has reminded her, all it takes is one person with the right type of bone marrow.
"Everyone's walking around with the ability to save someone else," Lynne said. "It's just that conscious decision to come out, to swab your cheek, to commit to helping someone else in need that could have been you."
