Specialist Luis Marrupe spends his days on Fort Drum ensuring his company has everything it needs.

“The importance of my job is to keep track of our company's inventory to prevent fraud and waste and be as efficient as we can be as a company,” Marrupe said.

However, in his free time, he takes on a different role.

A few years ago, Luis had heard about a program on Fort Bliss called “Salute to Life,” a congressionally funded bone marrow registry for the Department of Defense.

In its 31 years of existence, it had only held a total of one event on Fort Drum until Marrupe came along.

“I developed the presentation I presented to the Town Command. They loved it,” he said.

A recent event on Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield on Fort Drum is the 16th that Marrupe has held.

“It is very great. Usually, we have between 20 to 30 people coming. But I mean, there's like probably 80 or 100 right here,” Marrupe said of the event. “Let's say we have one person in the entire world with cancer, right? They need at least 432 people in the registry so that they can have one person to match with them.”

Because of the events, Marrupe is personally responsible for nearly 1,000 names being added to the registry. That's 100% of the signups on Fort Drum and 24% across the U.S. Army.

“There's soldiers and airmen here affected by cancer directly, families affected directly by cancer. And if I can help, 1,000, 2,000 people register so we can give a chance of life to two to three people, then that definitely will make an impact,” Marrupe said.

Interested civilians are encouraged to visit BeTheMatch.org.