Part 2: We Found Out Our Sergeant-at-Arms Had Been Quietly Donating Blood Every Month for 15 Years — When We Asked Him Why, He Said One Sentence That Silenced the Whole Clubhouse
I want to tell you what happened to Theodore Marek on the morning of June 14th, 2009.
I am writing this with his permission. He let me read his version of the story before I sent it. He told me, “Russ. Tell it the way it happened. Don’t make it pretty. Don’t make me sound brave. I wasn’t brave. I was lucky.”
In June of 2009, Bones was thirty-four years old. He had been a patched member of Northern Cross for six years at that point. He was riding the 1998 Heritage Softail he owned before the current Road King — same flat-black tank, similar profile.
He was riding home alone from a brother’s wedding in Davenport, Iowa, on the morning of June 14th. He had stayed sober at the wedding because he had a five-hour solo ride back to Joliet ahead of him.
At approximately 9:42 a.m., on Interstate 80 about twelve miles east of Princeton, Illinois, a 2003 Ford F-250 with a faulty front-left tire blew out at sixty-five miles per hour and crossed the centerline directly into Bones’s lane.
Bones went down.
The Heritage was destroyed.
Bones’s left forearm — the curved scar I mentioned earlier — was opened from the inside of his elbow to his wrist by a piece of broken aluminum saddlebag mount. He lost, in the next eight minutes lying in the median of I-80, a significant amount of blood. The state trooper who arrived on scene at 9:48 a.m. — a woman named Sergeant Helena Kovac, then thirty-nine, who is now retired and lives in Coal City — applied direct pressure with her own jacket and called for medical airlift.
Bones was airlifted to OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria.
By the time he arrived at the trauma bay at 10:31 a.m., he had lost approximately forty percent of his total blood volume.
He was given, over the next ninety minutes of stabilization and surgery, four units of packed red blood cells, two units of plasma, and one unit of platelets.
The surgical team — led by a trauma surgeon named Dr. Jennifer Whaley — saved his arm.
The blood — donated by complete strangers, screened and stored at a Red Cross facility in Peoria — saved his life.
He was in the hospital for nineteen days.
When he was discharged, the trauma case manager — a hospital social worker named Mrs. Patricia Reaves — sat with him in his room and explained what had happened. She told him he had received four units of packed red cells from four anonymous donors. She told him the donors’ identities were protected by federal regulation and could not be shared. She told him he could write thank-you letters that would be forwarded through the Red Cross network to the donors, if they had opted in to receive correspondence.
Bones wrote four letters.
He sent them through the Red Cross.
Three were returned six weeks later marked “Donor opted out of correspondence.”
One was answered.
The donor who answered was a woman named Tracy Reilly Foster. She was forty-one years old. She lived in Pekin, Illinois. She had been a regular blood donor since she was eighteen — she gave eight times a year, the maximum the Red Cross permitted.
She had donated the unit that arrived at OSF Saint Francis on the morning of June 14th, 2009, four days earlier.
She had not known where her blood would go. None of them ever do.
She wrote Bones a short kind note that said, “I’m so glad you’re okay. Please take care of yourself. — Tracy.”
She did not include a phone number or address beyond the postmark.
Bones, who was twenty-two days out of the hospital and still on heavy pain medication, wrote her back. He thanked her. He told her he would never forget her name.
She wrote back once more, in early September of 2009. She told him he was welcome. She told him she was glad to know her donation had landed somewhere it was needed. She told him she was about to start a new round of treatment for stage three ovarian cancer she had been fighting for two years.
She wrote, in her exact words in the letter Bones still keeps in a small wooden box on the dresser in his bedroom, “Theodore — if I don’t make it through this, please consider being one of my replacements someday. The blood supply needs people. Be one of mine. — Tracy.”
She died on November 17th, 2009.
Bones found out in February of 2010 when one of his thank-you letters came back marked “Recipient deceased — please contact donor services.”
He did not know her family. He did not have a way to attend her funeral. He did not have anywhere to send flowers.
What he did, on March 4th, 2010 — the day his final cast came off and his arm was cleared for full use — was drive himself to the Red Cross donor center on Larkin Avenue in Joliet, walk inside, and donate a single pint of his own blood.
He has done it every month since.
For the last fifteen years.
The same date every month — the fourth, if it falls on a weekday, or the next available Saturday if it does not.
One pint.
Once a month.
For fifteen years.
He has never told a single brother in our club.
He has never told the railyard. He has never told his sister, who lives in Tucson. He has never told his ex-wife, who lives in Naperville and with whom he is on cordial terms. He has never told his AA sponsor, with whom he has worked the steps for nineteen years.
He told only the Red Cross intake nurse who became a friend over the years, a woman named Mrs. Carmen Diaz, who has worked at the Larkin Avenue center for twenty-three years and has drawn his blood every single visit since 2014.
The three letters on the inside of his right wrist — T R F — are her initials.
Tracy Reilly Foster.
He had them tattooed on August 17th, 2010, the first August after she died, in a small shop on Cass Street in Joliet.
He has carried her name on his body for fifteen years.
He has paid for her absence in pints, every month, for fifteen years.
None of us in the club knew, until last September, when a twenty-six-year-old prospect named Diego — who works security at a hospital and was at the Larkin Avenue center for his own scheduled donation — saw Bones walk out the front door in a black leather Northern Cross MC cut with a Snoopy bandage taped to the inside of his left elbow.
I want to walk you through how the brothers found out.
Diego — full name Diego Almonte, twenty-six, a security officer at AMITA Health Saint Joseph in Joliet — had been a prospect for eight months at that point. He took his prospect duties seriously. He was a clean, careful, observant kid.
He was at the Larkin Avenue Red Cross donor center for his own scheduled donation appointment at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, September 21st, 2024.
He was running ten minutes early.
He pulled into the parking lot at 10:47.
He sat in his pickup truck and finished a coffee.
At 11:14, the front door of the donor center opened. A man walked out.
The man was wearing a black leather Northern Cross MC cut.
Diego recognized the cut immediately.
Then Diego recognized the man.
It was Bones.
Diego froze in the truck.
Bones did not see him.
Bones walked across the parking lot to his Road King, started the engine, and rode away.
Diego sat in the truck for another two minutes thinking about what he had just seen.
Then Diego went inside for his own appointment.
The intake nurse — Mrs. Carmen Diaz — checked him in. Diego asked her, casually, on the way to his draw chair, “Ma’am. Was that man who just walked out — the one with the leather vest — does he come in here a lot?”
Mrs. Diaz looked up from her clipboard.
She was a careful woman. She had been doing this work for twenty-three years.
She said, “Sir. I can’t share information about other donors. I’m sorry.”
Diego said, “Ma’am. I’m sorry. I’m in the same club he is. I’m just surprised.”
Mrs. Diaz looked at him for a long moment.
She said, very carefully, “He has been one of my regulars for a long time. That is all I will say.”
Diego nodded.
He sat down for his draw.
He thought about it the entire forty-five minutes he was at the center.
By the time he walked out at noon, Diego had decided two things.
One: he was not going to confront Bones directly. Diego was a prospect. Bones was the sergeant-at-arms. That was not how the club worked.
Two: he was going to tell our president.
Diego called our president — a sixty-one-year-old retired union electrician named Ozzie Kowalczyk — that afternoon at 1:47 p.m.
He told Ozzie what he had seen.
Ozzie listened.
Then Ozzie said, “Diego. Don’t tell anyone else. Let me handle this.”
Diego did not tell anyone else.
Ozzie spent the next eight days thinking about it.
On the following Wednesday — October 2nd, 2024 — at our regular club meeting, Ozzie stood up at the head of the table after we had finished business.
He said, “Brothers. Bones. Stay seated. The rest of you — I want to ask you a question.”
Bones sat at the table looking at him calmly. He did not seem worried. He did not seem nervous. He looked the way Bones always looked. Steady.
Ozzie said, “Brothers. One of our prospects saw Bones walking out of a Red Cross donor center on Larkin Avenue last month. In his cut. With a bandage on his arm. I have been thinking about this for eight days. I want to ask Bones something in front of all of us.”
The clubhouse went very quiet.
Bones did not move.
Ozzie said, “Theodore. How long have you been giving blood?”
Bones looked at him for a long moment.
Then Bones said, very quietly, “Fifteen years, Ozzie. Same date every month.”
A few of the brothers shifted in their chairs.
Ozzie said, “Bones. Why didn’t you tell us?”
Bones said, “It wasn’t anyone’s business.”
Ozzie said, “Bones. We are your brothers.”
Bones said, “I know. That doesn’t change my answer.”
There was a long pause.
Ozzie said, “Brother. Will you tell us why? You don’t have to. I’m asking.”
Bones sat there for another long moment.
Then Bones rolled up the sleeve of his t-shirt and showed everyone, for the first time, the inside of his right wrist.
The three letters.
T R F
He said, “Brothers. Some of you have asked me about this tattoo over the years. I never told you what it meant. I’m gonna tell you now.”
He told us about June 14th, 2009.
He told us about the I-80 crash. The pickup truck. The blown tire. The aluminum saddlebag mount that opened his arm. Sergeant Helena Kovac with her jacket pressed against his elbow in the median. The airlift to Peoria. The four units of packed red cells. The two units of plasma. The unit of platelets.
He told us about Mrs. Patricia Reaves and the four thank-you letters.
He told us about Tracy Reilly Foster.
He told us about her cancer.
He told us about the second letter she had written him in September of 2009.
He told us about her death in November of 2009.
He told us about driving himself to the Larkin Avenue Red Cross center on March 4th, 2010, with his fresh-removed cast in the passenger seat, and giving his first pint.
He told us about the date.
He told us about every month.
He told us about Mrs. Carmen Diaz and the small wooden box on his dresser and the second letter from Tracy that he still reads on the third of every month, the night before his donation.
When he was done speaking, the clubhouse was completely silent for almost a full minute.
I have never, in seventeen years in this club, seen our clubhouse that silent.
Then our oldest member — a sixty-eight-year-old retired postal worker named Wally, road name Padre, the man who patched Bones in 2003 — stood up.
He walked over to Bones.
He put both hands on Bones’s shoulders.
He said, very quietly, “Theodore. You have been carrying this for fifteen years.”
Bones said, “Yeah, Wally. I have.”
Wally said, “Brother. Put it down. We’ve got it now.”
He pulled Bones into a hug.
Bones — who had not, by his own account later, cried in front of another human being in fifteen years — cried into Wally’s shoulder for about two minutes.
The rest of us stood up.
We surrounded them.
Nobody said anything.
We just stood there.
For a long time.
After the meeting, Ozzie asked Bones if he could ask one more question.
Bones nodded.
Ozzie said, “Brother. How many pints have you given in fifteen years?”
Bones thought about it. He has a careful mind for numbers.
He said, “One every month for fifteen years. Plus three doubles where they did red cell apheresis. So one-eighty plus three doubles equals one-eighty-three single-pint equivalents.”
He paused.
He said, “Each pint can save up to three lives. The Red Cross says that.”
He paused again.
He said, “So somewhere between three hundred and five hundred and forty people are walking around right now who got a piece of me in them. They don’t know my name. I don’t know theirs. Just like I never knew the four people whose blood went into me on the morning of June 14th, 2009.”
He looked at Ozzie.
He said, “That’s the deal, Ozzie. That was the trade. I owed somebody for being alive. I couldn’t pay them back. So I’m paying everybody.”
Ozzie did not say anything for a long moment.
Then Ozzie said, “Brother. I’d like the club to do something. With your permission.”
Bones said, “Ozzie. Don’t make this a thing.”
Ozzie said, “I’m not gonna make it a thing publicly. I’m asking your permission for the brothers.”
Bones said, “Okay.”
Ozzie said, “Starting next month, every brother in Northern Cross MC who is medically cleared to donate is going to walk into a Red Cross donor center on the fourth of the month. With you. Not for credit. Not for posts. For Tracy.”
Bones did not say anything for a long moment.
Then he nodded once.
He said, “Okay, Ozzie. Okay.”
On Tuesday, November 4th, 2024 — five weeks after the meeting — nineteen members of the Northern Cross MC who were medically cleared and not on disqualifying medications walked into the Larkin Avenue Red Cross donor center over the course of the day.
Mrs. Carmen Diaz was working the morning shift.
She had been told nothing.
When the first three brothers walked in at 8:47 a.m. in their cuts, she stood up from her desk.
She said, “Gentlemen. Can I help you?”
The brothers said, “We’re here to donate, ma’am. We have appointments.”
She looked at her clipboard.
There were nineteen appointments stacked across the day.
She started to put it together.
By the time the fifth brother walked in at 9:30 — Bones himself, on his usual schedule — Mrs. Diaz had figured it out.
She walked over to Bones.
She did not say anything for a full thirty seconds.
Then she said, very softly, “Theodore. Did you tell them?”
Bones said, “Carmen. They figured it out. I told them the truth. They asked to come.”
Mrs. Diaz put her hand on his shoulder.
She did not say anything else.
She went and processed the next intake.
She drew Bones’s blood at 10:14 a.m.
She drew eighteen more units of blood from Northern Cross MC members across the rest of the day.
She had to call in another phlebotomist to help.
It is, by Mrs. Diaz’s account, the busiest single day she has ever had at the Larkin Avenue center in twenty-three years.
Every month since November of 2024, the brothers of Northern Cross MC who can give blood do.
We do not post about it.
We do not put it on flyers.
We do not run a fundraiser around it.
We just go.
The fourth of the month, if it is a weekday. The next Saturday, if it isn’t.
Some months we give twenty units total. Some months it’s fifteen because brothers are out of town or sick. Some months it’s twelve.
Bones still drives himself to the Larkin Avenue center every month.
He still arrives at his usual time.
He still talks to Mrs. Carmen Diaz the same way he has for ten years.
He still keeps Tracy Reilly Foster’s second letter in the small wooden box on his dresser.
He still reads it on the third of every month, the night before his donation.
I want to mention one other thing.
In December of 2024, Ozzie tracked down — through some quiet research with the help of a brother who works in the Will County clerk’s office — Tracy Reilly Foster’s only living family member. A daughter named Rachel Foster Brennan, who was eight years old when her mother died and is now twenty-three. She lives in Pekin, Illinois. She works as a kindergarten teacher.
Ozzie called her in late December.
He told her, very carefully, the story.
He told her about a man named Theodore Marek who had been donating blood every month for fifteen years because of a single letter her mother had written him in September of 2009.
Rachel Foster Brennan cried on the phone for a long time.
Then she asked Ozzie if she could meet Bones.
Bones met her on January 17th of this year.
At Mac’s Diner.
He bought her coffee.
She brought a small framed photograph of her mother.
He brought the second letter.
They sat at the diner for three hours.
I do not know everything they talked about.
What I know is that when Bones came back to the clubhouse that Wednesday evening, he was carrying a small package wrapped in brown paper.
He showed me what was inside, two days later, in his garage.
It was a small framed photograph of Tracy Reilly Foster from 2008. Smiling. Healthy. A year before her diagnosis.
Rachel had given it to him at the diner.
She had said, “Mr. Marek. You have been donating blood in my mother’s memory for fifteen years. I would like you to have this. So you know what she looked like.”
The photograph now sits on the dresser in Bones’s bedroom, next to the small wooden box.
He had not, until that day, ever seen her face.
Bones is forty-nine.
He still works the third shift at Norfolk Southern.
He still rides the 2007 Road King.
He still gives blood on the fourth of every month.
The whole club gives now.
Some Wednesday nights, when the meeting ends and the brothers are clearing out, I stay back with him. We have a coffee. We do not talk much. He is not a man who talks much.
Last Wednesday I asked him a question I had been holding.
I said, “Bones. Why did you finally let me write this down?”
He thought about it for a long time.
Then he said, “Russ. Tracy needed somebody. I needed somebody. Neither of us got to know each other. Maybe somebody reading this needs to figure out what they owe and start paying it back. That’s the only reason.”
He sipped his coffee.
He said, “And maybe somebody reading this is a kindergarten teacher in Pekin who never knew her mother left a piece of herself in the world that kept moving. I want her to know that piece is still moving.”
He set the cup down.
He said, “Tell it, Russ. Tell it the way it happened.”
I have told it the way it happened.
If this story moved you — follow the page. There are more bikers out there like Bones. More small wooden boxes on dressers. More Tracys in the world whose names we never learn. More debts we did not know we owed. There are more stories the world doesn’t see — and I will keep telling them as long as someone keeps reading.
