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Peter Ciaccia

If you know Peter Ciaccia, you immediately understand what motivates us, his friends, to rally in support of Peter, his family, and those who similarly require bone marrow transplants, by organizing a bone marrow drive in his honor.

If you are not fortunate enough to know Peter personally, allow me to share some things with you about this very special individual. Peter is a 53-year-old Rochester native; he celebrated 30 years of marriage to Linda on June 8th (one day before he entered the hospital to begin a bone marrow transplant) and is a proud father of two children, Mike and Kim. Peter is well-known for his exceptional business acumen. He is past co-founder of the accounting firm that bears his name and is now known as Insero, Kasperski, Ciaccia & Co., P.C., and is currently on leave from his position as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Lenel Systems International, Inc., a Pittsford-based security technology company. Ciaccia has also been a Board member and high-level adviser to numerous other area companies, and his charitable work includes being past Chairman of the local chapter of the American Cancer Society. But more importantly than all of that, Peter is that rare individual who is perpetually and thoroughly generous, equitable and affable toward all he encounters. He also exudes optimism, which is all the more impressive when you learn that Peter has been battling Leukemia for 18 years. His grace and selflessness through the days and seasons of chemotherapy and complications is a true inspiration to those of us lucky enough to call him a friend.

However, the years of rigorous treatments have taken their toll, and in January Peter was diagnosed with secondary myelodysplatic syndrome, which necessitated the bone marrow transplant. His is not a rare situation: each year approximately 30,000 people are diagnosed with conditions for which a bone marrow or blood stem cell transplant represents the only possible life-saving cure. About 70% of those individuals do not have a suitable donor within their own family and must find an unrelated matched donor. This is where the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) comes in, which is an organization that maintains a donor registry of over 5 million individuals who have committed to donating their marrow or blood stem cells to any patient in the world for whom they are a match. But despite the existence of 5 million ready donors, the immense diversity in the population is such that those with rarer tissue traits – which includes many thousands of people each year – cannot find a match in the registry and die waiting. The answer to this need is to recruit more people into the NMDP donor registry.

In a certain way, Peter was one of the lucky ones, because a suitable donor was able to be located for him through the registry. As mentioned, Peter entered the hospital on June 9th to begin the bone marrow transplant process, and those who know him are all hoping and praying that the transplant is a success.

Although Marrow Drive Rochester (MDR) was founded at a time when Peter’s donor had not yet been located, we who participated in the founding of MDR were very realistic that the odds of our drive specifically helping Peter were not large. Rather, our motivation was that there is a very good possibility that the bone marrow drive will result in finding suitable donors for others – individuals who may be strangers to us, but who also have families and friends who care about them as much as we care about Peter. Peter’s match exists in the registry due to the selfless act of some stranger to volunteer to become a potential donor. That stranger (Peter’s match) was probably recruited through a bone marrow drive that someone held in honor of his or her loved one, and in the same way that drive helped Peter, we now hope that our marrow drive will help others to get another chance at life.

More information about our efforts or on becoming a donor Click Here.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration. 

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