A 13-year-old boy in remission after a long battle with leukemia has finally been given a chance to meet the man who saved his life.
According to Inside Edition, Ezra Miller has been waiting a very long time to meet 29-year-old Luis Miranda, a complete stranger who donated his bone marrow to the young boy after learning that he was a perfect match.
"I’ve been wanting to meet him for the longest time, and to be able to meet him was just pretty cool,” Ezra, of Castle Rock, Colorado, told InsideEdition.com. “It’s kind of weird knowing that he did that for me.”
As for Miranda, the son of undocumented immigrants, the donation was absolutely a no-brainer the moment he found out he could help.
“Once they tell you there’s someone in need, there’s this sense of, ‘Yes, let’s do it, I’m happy to help,’” he told InsideEdition.com. “I knew that if my family were in this situation, where they were in need, I would hope someone would do something for them.”
Miranda, originally from Guatemala, explained that coming from a family of undocumented immigrants has inspired him to always be open to helping others in need.
“Growing up in an undocumented family with very little resources, I struggled," he said. "I had dreams, I had all these things I wanted to do, but we just didn’t have much. Simple things like health care, we just didn’t have access to.”
“I’ve been able to beat the odds because strangers were able to help us out,” he added.
Sadly, Miranda has lost plenty of family members along the way, according to Inside Edition.
“I had so little power over what happened with my sister and her husband or my nieces and nephews,” he explained. “Here, I had the power to actually change someone’s life for the better, and I knew this is what I wanted to do.”
Cynthia Lowry, Ezra’s mother, has made it clear that she believes Miranda’s bone marrow donation is what propelled her son into remission and saved his life.
“As a parent, you... care [for] and protect your children, and this is one of those places where that ability was taken away from me,” Lowry told InsideEdition.com. “It has been some ups and downs and some near loss experiences, but we’re really grateful for Luis.”
After meeting Ezra for the very first time, Miranda says he can now see that his donation was worth it.
“To know he’s doing well and will have a chance to play outside and ski like he likes and be an adult, that’s fantastic,” he said. “I feel very blessed to be part of something so great.”
Now that he has donated his own bone marrow, Miranda hopes to become an inspiration for other potential donors, especially in the Latino community.
“We just don’t have enough Latinos registered in the bone marrow registry, which means today, the odds for a Latino to have a type of blood cancer to actually get a transplant is very small,” Miranda said.