QUESTION: What ever happened to leukemia patient Joshua David Paul Maligro of Brentwood, Calif., whose relatives appealed to Hawaii residents last April to donate bone marrow or cord blood?

ANSWER: Joshua Maligro, 14, never found a perfect donor match and died Dec. 23 at the Children's Hospital and Research Center in Oakland after two years of battling acute myelogenous leukemia.

Joshua's family asked the public for help last April in hopes that Hawaii's multiracial makeup might increase the chances of finding a match for the Filipino-Caucasian boy. Relatives of Joshua's father, Brent Maligro, in Hawaii held fundraisers to help pay for treatment for the rarely cured cancer.

According to Roy Yonashiro, recruitment supervisor of the Hawaii Bone Marrow Donor Registry, “;Donors of Asian/Pacific Islander ancestry make up only 6 percent of the national registry and are always needed.”; Thirteen registries were held in April alone.

Mother Desiree Maligro said Joshua received a cord blood transplant in June 2008 from a donor in Spain. He was stable for 13 months with the help of frequent blood transfusions, she said. But the cord blood was not a perfect match and Joshua's new stem cells started treating his body as foreign. He was hospitalized September, and by November was seriously ill, she said.

“;It's really hard to find that perfect match—we're a melting pot. Something so beautiful (our mixed blood) ... it's unique,”; she said.

She would often ask him, “;Are you still happy you went through with the transplant?”; And only once did he indicate his spirits were flagging when he answered: “;Sometimes I wish I hadn't. I just didn't know it would hurt this bad.”;

Desiree Maligro kept a blog of her son's battle but stopped last year at his request because “;he was afraid people would lose hope if they knew how bad it is.”; Her former entries are available at caringbridge.org/visit/joshuamaligro, and she plans to write about Joshua in the future.

“;Some people are just brought into this world to teach us,”; she said. “;He taught me what it was to hold onto hope, he taught me compassion, and to be stronger than I ever thought I could be.”;