MERCER ISLAND, Wash. -- Five years old and a princess, at least to her family, Siona Shah rarely goes anywhere without at least one of her stuffed animals.
This time, at the Mercer Island Community Center, a purple teddy bear was the pick of the day.
"I got to go to Disneyland," she tells those willing to listen.
It takes a moment to realize the little girl playing with her brother and friends, giving high fives to uncles and eating strawberries with aunts, is very sick.
A moment to realize the almost 200 people who turned out for Sunday's bone marrow drive were all here to try and save Siona's life.
"You wake up in the morning, and the first thing you see is her smiling," says her mother Reshma Shah. "You can't be down about it, she kind of keeps us going."
"She's such a fighter, she has such a great attitude," said Nigam Shah, Siona's father.
In June 2008, Siona was diagnosed with a high risk form of leukemia. Her parents say at first, she was given an 85 percent chance of survival.
But after 19 months of chemotherapy and radiation, weeks spent in at Seattle's Children's Hospital, Siona's cancer, once in remission, came back.
Now her chances are far more slim, her parents say, less than 20 percent.
On Sunday, the little girl from Renton was able to be out with family, but just a week earlier, she was sick with a flu virus.
Her mother says they visited Disneyland in April, and Siona's only wish was "to get better."
Still, "she never complains, and she never whines about anything," said Reshma.
A bone marrow or cord blood transfusion is her only hope, and family members say that's why they organized the drive with the Puget Sound Blood Center.
"The more people, the better it's going to be for her" to find a compatible donor, said her second cousin, Purvie Kishan.
Race often plays a key role in narrowing down a bone marrow match, but out of the millions of registered donors, only about 27 percent are ethnic minorities of any kind.
Siona is of East Indian descent, and those who organized the drive are targeting Puget Sound's South Asian community to better their chances. A similar marrow drive, held by relatives, ran in San Francisco the same time as the Mercer Island drive.
Siona's father says he was thankful for the turnout, that what keeps them going through tough times is support from family, friends, and the community.
"You've got to believe in the system, you've got to believe in what's good. What's good is that we have a bunch of people in here supporting Siona, supporting our family," Nigam said.
"And most of all, we have an unbelievable daughter," he said. "She is the most amazing, caring, loving, unselfish person that we've just ever known."
More about Siona's story can be found here: http://sionashah.com/
To register for the National Marrow Donor Program, click here: http://www.marrow.org/
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