Kunsan Airforce personnel were part of one of the better good neighbor stories I have read yet:

When a medical technician handed Capt. Kevin Blackney a cell phone the morning of Oct. 8 and told him a doctor was on the line, Blackney assumed it was another Air Force flight surgeon.

He was wrong. It was a South Korean oncologist, asking for something that was hard to find in the United States, and even harder to find in South Korea: someone with AB negative blood.

A South Korean woman with leukemia needed a transfusion of AB negative platelets that would help her blood clot and essentially stop her from bleeding to death.

If she didn’t get it, her doctors expected her to die soon.

About one in 2,000 South Koreans have AB negative blood, compared to one in 100 Americans.

“They had searched everything they had, and they didn’t have anything available,” said Blackney, a flight surgeon for the 8th Medical Group.

When Kunsan medical workers went through their records, they found one airman with AB negative: Airman Tamarias Pope, a 19-year-old who worked the night shift for Security Forces.

Medical staff called his squadron. Around 11 a.m., he was roused from sleep with a knock at the door and was asked if he would donate platelets for a South Korean.

“I was like, sure, why not? They tell us back in basic, ‘Service before self,’?” said Pope, who had never donated blood before. “I wanted to help out somebody because I’d want somebody to do that for my family and friends.” [Stars & Stripes]

The Korean woman who was sick with leukemia was only in her early 20′s which is sad to see someone so young that sick. Incredibly the Korean doctors contacted Kunsan around 9:30AM and they were able to contact and transport Airman Pope to give blood around lunch time. The blood transfusion would go on to save the Korean woman’s life and she has since been discharged from the hospital.

This is really a great job by everyone at Kunsan for their quick reaction in locating and transporting a donor to save this woman’s life. This is definitely something everyone involved with the execution of this operation at Kunsan should be proud of.