After a roughly 8-month wait, 20-year-old Chris Betancourt -- who went viral last year after he and his best friend, Dillon Hill, launched a mission to complete a bucket list -- has found a bone marrow donor.
Betancourt was diagnosed with leukemia in September of last year. Doctors told him that unless he could find a bone marrow donor – specifically of Puerto Rican descent – he only has one or two years to live.
“I was pretty sad for the whole week hearing it…I was like crying for like a week straight,” Betancourt said. “But Dillon knew I was dealing with a lot. He was racking his head, ‘what can we do?’”
Over the new few months, the two best friends from Carmichael launched their mission to complete a bucket list. That list included breaking a world record, which the two best friends accomplished by breaking a world record for most people to sign up for the "Be the Match" bone marrow registry in one day.
Two months later, Betancourt found his own match.
"It's registry based, so someone (it's still unknown who) joined the registry and their genetics matched," Hill, 19, told ABC10.
Betancourt is now doing testing to make sure he's able to have the surgery.
On Monday night, Betancourt and Hill held a screening of a documentary they made about their bucket list experience at the Crest Theater in Sacramento. That is where they announced he had found his match.