Could you be a perfect match?

Colin Hines wears a chain around his neck and has a tattoo on his leg with the same message: "Make Life Count."

It's a motto the 25-year-old Pike Creek man has lived by since he was a teenager. Now, they're words that anyone reading this can live by, too.

The Dickinson High School and University of Delaware graduate is in critical need of a bone marrow transplant. Perhaps July 12 will be his lucky day. That's when friends, family and Dickinson faculty are hosting a bone marrow donor drive in his honor.

Hines was diagnosed in March with Acute Mylogenous Leukemia. He had been sick for months, but it took doctors time to figure out what was wrong and how bad things were. When his doctor finally ordered blood work, he was in the hospital the next day, and didn't leave for two months.

The leukemia was in an advanced stage, and aggressive chemotherapy treatment began almost immediately. It didn't work, and doctors have told Hines a bone marrow transplant is his only chance for survival.

"My immune system is unable to stop it," Hines said. "The leukemia is going to continue to grow. A donor's marrow could recognize the leukemia as foreign to my body, fight it and kill it. My body's not doing that right now."

To complicate matters, Hines, like many African-Americans, has a rare tissue type that is difficult to match. In fact, doctors could find only eight, and none were available.

Some donors may have moved, others may have donated to a loved one but are not inclined to go through the minor outpatient surgery for a stranger, Hines said.

Yet Hines hopes anyone that donates at his upcoming drive will be willing to donate to anyone who matches.

That attitude is critically important, said Alina Suprunova, donor recruiter for DKMS, because it increases the odds of a match for Hines and others waiting for a donor.

"At the same time this drive is happening there will be hundreds of others all over the U.S., she said. "It's very likely a match will come from somewhere else."

There is a good chance that Hines' match will be African-American, Suprunova said, but tissue types are not confined to a single ethnicity -- meaning it's anyone's guess what the person who holds the key to Hines' survival will look like.

Once a matching donor is found, doctors will put Hines through a rigorous round of chemotherapy to destroy his immune system. Then, healthy cells from the donor's marrow will be infused into his body with the hope it recognizes them as its own and uses them to create a cancer-free immune system.

"Think of the patient as an empty vessel to be filled with the cells of a healthy person," Suprunova said.

Hines' longtime friend Daniel Hulsman, who helped organize the drive, said that participating is easy: there's a short screening and a cheek swabbing -- no needles, nothing invasive.

He said more than 50 friends, relatives and Dickinson faculty will staff the five-hour event, and he hopes donors keep them busy.

"Our goal is to help Colin, but to help as many other people out there as we can."