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."

As Pope got ready to go to Chonbuk National University Hospital in Jeonju, about 90 minutes from the base, Kunsan doctors got another call: South Korean doctors needed Pope to the hospital faster, and they needed more donors. Their patient was dying.

Kunsan sent out a basewide e-mail, asking anyone with AB negative to call them.

Within two hours, more than 100 people had called, e-mailed or walked into the medical clinic, asking what their blood type was and — if it wasn’t a match — what they could do to help. Out of 2,800 airmen at Kunsan, the base found three others with AB negative, who remained on standby for several days in case the patient needed another transfusion.

"If she hadn’t had the platelet transfusion, any small thing could have caused bleeding," Blackney said.

The woman, a leukemia patient in her early 20s from Gunsan City, had a bone-marrow transplant in early October with bone marrow donated by her brother. By Oct. 8, the day her doctors contacted Kunsan, her red blood cells and platelet counts had dropped precipitously. She began bleeding and speckles appeared on her skin — both signs she needed an immediate blood transfusion.

"She was on the verge of losing her life," said Gwak Jae-yong, an oncologist who treated the woman.

The hospital put out requests for blood on a major Korean television station and online.

"It was going to be too late by the time help arrived. We needed a faster way to save her life," he said.

Gwak and other medical staff remembered a case several years ago where a Kunsan airman donated blood to a patient and saved his life, so Chonbuk doctors called the air base.

Doctors called Kunsan around 9:30 a.m.

Pope donated his blood around lunchtime.

And the patient received it around midnight.

Over the next several days, her condition improved. She was discharged from the hospital on Oct. 19.

"I was so pleased and greatly thankful to see my patient’s life saved and for her to go into recovery," Gwak said. "I believe the airman deserves credit and a reward for what he has done."

Kunsan spokesman Lt. Dave Herndon said the base wants to bring the woman to Kunsan after she recovers and show her where Pope works.