Local woman loses leukemia battle Local woman loses leukemia battle (July 27, 2005)

Heather Marie Lynch, a 29-year-old Ladera woman, died July 23 following a 20-month struggle with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Ms. Lynch, who was one month shy of her 30th birthday, passed away at home in the arms of her family.

A memorial service and celebration of her life is set for 3 p.m. Saturday, July 30, at Our Lady of the Wayside Church at 930 Portola Valley Road in Portola Valley.

Ms. Lynch had a brief remission after she was first diagnosed with ALL in October 2003, relapsing in July 2004. Her struggle to find a bone marrow donor was chronicled in a December 2004 Almanac cover story. Family members and about 120 of her coworkers at Siebel Systems were tested, but no one was a close enough match.

Her parents, Bill and Linda Lynch, rallied everyone they knew to be screened as a potential bone marrow donor and circulated a "chain letter or chain e-mail" titled "Marrow Drive to Save Heather's Life," with a photo of Ms. Lynch with long blond hair and a cheerful smile.

For a bone marrow transplant to be successful, both donor and recipient have to have closely matched hereditary tissue traits, which are usually found within the same ethnic group, according to the National Marrow Donor Program.

The family believed that the shortage of Native American donors was making it difficult to find a match for Ms. Lynch, who had a Native American great-great grandmother.

A donor was found this spring who was a close, but not perfect, match, and a transplant was scheduled for April at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle. However, the donor fell through for medical reasons, said her mother Linda Lynch. Ms. Lynch returned to Stanford Hospital and participated in a clinical trial of an experimental drug, but it didn't work, her mother said.

Ms. Lynch grew up in Ladera, attended Las Lomitas and La Entrada schools, and graduated from Menlo-Atherton High School, where she competed in volleyball, basketball and softball. At the University of California at Berkeley, Ms. Lynch played for the Cal Bears women's lacrosse team.

She enjoyed traveling, and her job as an "alliance partner manager" at Siebel Systems gave her opportunities to see the world. She lived for a year in London, and was living in San Francisco when she first became ill.

Ms. Lynch wanted to express her gratitude to her friends, the nurses and staff at Stanford Hospital, and her coworkers at Siebel Systems for their continued support during her ordeal, said her father Bill Lynch. Her family is also grateful to everyone who contributed to the blood bank, National Bone Marrow Program and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, he said.

She is survived by her parents Linda and Bill Lynch of Ladera; her brother Bill; and her grandparents Helen and Robert Blaszak.

In lieu of flowers, the family prefers memorial gifts be made to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, www.leukemia-lymphoma.org. Ms. Lynch would also have appreciated support of stem cell research, in the hope that it may provide a key to understanding leukemia, her family said.

Because Ms. Lynch never liked the color black, her family suggested that friends wear pink or purple to her memorial service.

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