Media Coverage

Eric Drew is a nationally recognized leukemia and identity
theft survivor, and is the first and only person to force a federal
criminal conviction under the new HIPAA patient privacy laws.  Eric
is a former high school football quarterback, runway model, beauty
pageant producer, and VP of several Silicon Valley global software and banking firms.  He has lived and
worked in various countries in Europe and Asia, and currently splits
his time between being a Founder and Executive VP of KnightsBridge
Castle Inc. and Director of the Eric Drew Foundation.  As he continues to recover from a stem cell
transplant for a rare and usually fatal disease, Eric is working hard
to fight against identity theft and to assist terminally ill patients
and their families in need.

Highlights

1. While donating
   blood to kids with leukemia at the Red Cross, Eric discovers that he himself
   has a deadly leukemia and may have only a few days to live.
2. Eric’s girlfriend
   Nicole decides to stay with him through the fight, even after Eric tells
   her that she should leave and go on with her life
3. While going through
   eight months of heavy chemo at Stanford, Eric rallies hundreds to his cause,
   starts a foundation that raises almost $250,000 in 2 months, and organizes
   a bone marrow registration drive attended by over 1000.
4. Eric is transferred
   to Seattle for treatment, where
   several attempts including a bone marrow transplant over nine months fail
   to stop his disease.
5. While in Seattle,
   a hospital worker, believing Eric will not survive, steals Eric’s identity
   to acquire credit cards and go on a shopping spree.
6. After months
   of personal investigation, while continuing to undergo transplant treatment,
   Eric is able to catch the thief and an arrest is made
7. Eric persuades
   the federal government to pursue prosecution under HIPAA, resulting in the
   first conviction under the new federal patient privacy act.
8. Eric continues
   to fight this deadly disease despite the failure of the transplant, locating
   an experimental stem cell procedure in Minnesota that could save his life.
9. Eric receives
   a new immune system from cord blood stem cells, and spends several months
   barely clinging to life in a Minnesota hospital
10. The thief is
    prosecuted and sentenced.  Eric returns to California,
    begins his miraculous recovery and continues his fight against the identity
    theft epidemic as well as becoming a spokesperson for patient advocacy.

Here is a summary of Eric’s story as told by Eric himself.

Chapter 1 – Seattle
– 2003

As I lay there in
my hospital bed seething in pain and feeling the weight and loneliness of
my impending doom, I stared out my window at the dreary weather; weather that
perfectly matched my mood.  The sky was dark, drizzly, a bleak gray monotone;
the same as it had been nearly every day since I had been here at the hospital.
I could not remember the last time I had gazed on a blue sky, or felt the
warmth of sunshine on my shoulders.  A light rain started to fall and streams
of water began to roll silently down the glass of my steamy window.

The sharp chirp
of my cell phone startled me, as I was not supposed to have it on in the hospital
due to possible interference with the sensitive electronics keeping us fragile
patients alive.  Was it my fiancée Nicole?  My Dad?  What a relief!  I desperately
needed some comfort.  “Mr. Drew?  I am with (—bank) collections calling
about your overdue balance”. When I told this person that this must be a mistake
and that I never opened this account, they recommended that I pay the bill
and then file a dispute to keep it from negatively affecting my credit.  What
was this?  Blackmail?  I was livid.

“I don’t understand.
What more information do you need?” I nearly screamed.  “I’ve talked
to you people at least five times already.  Why is this so hard to grasp?!
Someone has obviously stolen my identity and opened these accounts using my
name.  I haven’t left this hospital in weeks – there’s absolutely no way I
could have charged any of these purchases!”  After a few more fruitless
minutes of pleading with the drone from the credit card company, I slammed
down the phone in frustration.  I was so upset, I was trembling with fury;
or maybe it was just the side-effects of the chemo again.  Who could tell
anymore?

Laying there in
my hospital bed, drenched in a cold sweat, my head swirling, my heart pounding,
a dark, desperate, despair began to envelop me.  “That’s it,” I
thought to myself.  “Enough is enough!”.  I have had it. I can’t stand
this anymore.  I’m just so damn tired of it all.  Tired of the chemo, the
radiation; tired of the horrible side-effects; tired of the constant, excruciating
pain and fitful, sleepless nights; tired of the endless rotation of new doctors;
and now, I’m sick and tired of these heartless, mindless, incompetent banks
and credit card companies that plague me as I’m lying here dying.  My family,
friends, and even the doctors have advised me to let it go.  I have a more
important fight to focus on, staying alive.  “Just don’t worry about it right
now, you can fix your credit when you get through this”, they all said.

Sometimes my decision to stay alive had to be re-made minute by minute, all
the time holding on to my predetermined decision to stay alive.  It is like
hanging on to a jagged cliff, arms burning and hands bleeding, not being able
to see above and all the time knowing the obvious consequence of simply letting
go.  I was constantly forced to make the conscious decision not to let go, which
would have been quite easy and would have ended the excruciating pain.  I just
never got to the point where I was ready to let go.  I would choose to hang
on and reach for the next possible handhold, then decide again at that moment
what I was going to do.

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Chapter
2 – Devastation

My “tomorrows”
use to be bright.  A year earlier, my life couldn’t have been better.  I had
just returned to the U.S. after working several years in Europe, I had
a wonderful, beautiful girlfriend who I was crazy about, and I was a partner
in a successful mortgage bank and back in my hometown of Los Gatos, CA.  I was in the
gym 4 days a week and in excellent shape.  I couldn’t have been happier.

Then one afternoon
in early December (’02), I went in to the local Red Cross clinic to donate
blood platelets to help young leukemia patients.  It was routine, something
I’d done regularly for over 8 years.  This time, however, the visit turned
out to be anything but routine.  When they took the usual sample to test blood
levels, the volunteer nurse mentioned that I didn’t look too well.  I actually
had been feeling rundown for several weeks, but just assumed it was a nasty
flu that I was having problems shaking.  When the Red Cross nurse told me
that I was borderline anemic and that I needed to see a doctor before donating,
I knew something was wrong.  I saw my doctor the next day who agreed to see
me without an appointment.  He examined me but wouldn’t say anything except
that I needed further blood tests.  There didn’t seem to be any urgency as
my doctor said he would be out of town for the rest of the week and to call
him on Monday to follow up.

That was on a Wednesday.
Two days later on Friday, the doctor (who was supposed to be out of town)
paged me and said there were “problems” with my blood test.  He
wanted me to see a Hematologist (a blood doctor) that next Monday and had
already scheduled an appointment.  “Doctors never move this fast”, I thought
to myself.  A feeling of dread and anxiety sank into me.  I tried to press
him for more information, but he was evasive, and would only say, “It’s
too early to tell; it could be a lot of things”.  Now, terribly frightened,
I spent a long, stressful weekend waiting for my Monday appointment to arrive
so I could get some answers.  I went about my normal activities, including
hosting a large company holiday party, even though I felt so tired, pale,
and had several other subtle negative symptoms.

When Monday finally
came, I drove myself to the address my doctor had given me.  As I pulled into
the parking lot, I found myself staring up at a very large sign:  “Valley Medical Cancer
Center.”  Cancer
Center??  What am I doing at a cancer center?  As I pulled into a parking
space, a cold chill ran through my body.   “This is just a precaution,”
I told myself.  It could still be something simple.  I quickly found the doctor’s
office, entered, and went to check in at the reception desk.  There was no
one there as it was lunchtime and the doctor had obviously agreed to squeeze
me in on his lunch break at the last minute.  As I was standing there, I noticed
several folders on the desk with the top one labeled, “DREW, ERIC”.
I peered down and happened to see the words, “Possible Acute Leukemia”
on a sticky note on top of the file.  It was like being hit by a train.  I
couldn’t breath.  I felt weak-kneed, light-headed and found myself fighting
back tears.  My dragging fatigue was instantly replaced by a rush of stinging
fear and adrenaline.  Images of my life began to flash through my mind.

When the doctor
came out to greet me I was on the verge of breaking down. I immediately asked
about the “Acute Leukemia” note on my file.  He said it was too early to tell
and that it could be several things including Mono or maybe even Malaria (since
I had traveled in Africa).  We would not know for sure
without taking a bone marrow sample. I managed to whisper, “So, how soon
do we schedule that?” The doctor said, “There’s no time to waste.
We’ll do it here, right now.”   He then proceeded to inject a little
local anesthetic, make an incision in my hip, and then punched a large diameter
boring needle into my rear hip bone next to my spine.  Despite the local anesthetic
which does not reach the inside of the bone, the procedure of sucking out
bone marrow felt eerie and excruciatingly painful.  Tears trickled down my
face.  I bit into my lip trying to stifle my moans, and soon recognized the
salty, metallic taste of blood in my mouth.

In many states,
a nurse licensed to do “conscious sedation” would have sedated me for this
procedure.  Not in California and
some other states, where nurses are not licensed to do a simple sedation.
Because it is not cost effective for anesthesiologists to do a five minute
procedure, nobody does short sedations.  Doctors are forced to do these invasive
procedures in their offices using only a short acting local anesthetic.  Pets
are treated more humanely than humans in most states.  My dog was sedated
when he had a bone marrow sample taken. This was the first of many eye opening
experiences to a politically charged, territorial, and sometimes cruelly inhumane
health care system that often places cost effectiveness above patient care.
Although this doctor treated me as delicately as possible, it was still very
painful and traumatic. Our system needs a lot of work.

I waited two very
long days for the biopsy results when my worst fears were confirmed.  As the
doctor entered the room to give me the results, tears swelled in his eyes.
“This is the worst part of my job” he murmured.  It was cancer alright, a
rare and virulent leukemia normally found in children – known as ALL (Acute
Lymphoblastic Leukemia).  Worse yet, the tests revealed that my bone marrow
was 100% cancerous.

I was told at that
point that I probably had less than a week to live without immediate and possibly
lethal chemotherapy treatment.  He said that if I wanted to live I needed
to check into Stanford Medical Center in Palo
Alto the next morning where he had already scheduled me an appointment.  After
informing my family of the devastating news, my half sister Alexa, (I had
only met a couple of years before) who –ironically- worked at the Fred
Hutchinson Transplant Center
in Seattle, informed me that if the treatment did not kill me, it would
leave me sterile.  The doctors at Stanford did not mention any of this, and
against their recommendation I put off the chemo for three days (risking my
life) to bank some of my genes.

Just like that,
my life as I new it was over and all of my dreams shattered.  I was about
to begin an ordeal beyond my most frightening nightmares.

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Chapter 3 – The Black Hole

Alexa immediately
flew from Seattle and before I checked into the hospital my family and I sat
around the dinner table to examine the treatment options.  These options were
quite lengthy and written in a scientific gibberish that at that time I could
not understand.   I chose the most aggressive protocol and began heavy chemo
treatments the week before Christmas 2002.  I felt like I had been flushed
down a black hole.

From the hospital
I began doing research on my disease, and found out that there were various
types of mutations that cause leukemia, and some are more treatable than others.
I began intensely questioning the doctors for answers.  Just when I figured
that things could not get any worse, I was told that additional tests had
discovered that not only do I have one of the most aggressive strains of leukemia,
but I also have what is known as the “Philadelphia Chromosome”.
This “Philadelphia” mutation makes the leukemia even harder to fight and
impossible to eradicate even with the highest doses of chemo and radiation.
For several days I experienced Leukemic Paralysis, where my joints became
stiff and painful from the high number of cancer cells in my blood.

As a result, my
treatments were intensified I was pumped full of chemicals so nasty that I
had just as much a chance of dying from the treatments as I did from the cancer.
That first round of chemo was one of the worst.   The chemicals were so strong
that they couldn’t inject them directly into my veins for fear they would
collapse.  Instead they painfully injected them directly into my spine and
into my heart through a large gauge catheter in my chest.  I wasn’t thinking
of recovery at that point, I just prayed I’d make it through the next treatment.
During this three week span of intensive treatments, I had violent seizures
and reactions to medications that sent me “code blue” to the ICU (Intensive
Care Unit) for 24 hour observation.

These treatments
went on for months.  In their efforts to destroy the cancer cells, the doctors
would take me right up to the brink of death, and then allow my body to try
to recuperate so they could do it all over again.  I had horrible, violent
reactions to the treatments.  It felt like my skin was on fire and my head
was going to burst.  I suffered from numerous infections and deadly complications
that would frequently put me back in the hospital.

I knew I would have
never would have made it this far without the unfailing support of so many
people.  Friends and colleagues flew in from all over the world to visit and
offer their assistance.  When I’d first been diagnosed and was in the hospital
very ill, I’d told my girlfriend Nicole to just forget about me and go on
with her life.  I didn’t want her suffering again (she had lost her mother
at age sixteen to cancer) by staying with me when there was so little chance
of survival.  Luckily for me, she ignored my pleas, and her beautiful face
was the first sight I saw when becoming conscious again in the ICU.

The intensive treatments
appeared to have done their job of wiping out the cancer.  Follow-up tests
showed no signs of the disease.  My physicians at Stanford told me that I
was in remission and that I tested negative for the Philadelphia chromosome. The good news was short
lived as I knew by this time that my disease was incurable by chemo and radiation
alone.  A bone marrow transplant was my best and only hope, and without a
successful bone marrow transplant, I had no chance of long term survival.

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Chapter 4 – Rally For Support

I was desperate
to survive and running out of money without a suitable bone marrow donor in
sight, so I reached out for support by sending out a “request for help” letter
to several places in California.  I raised almost $250,000 in just three months, which was
much more than I needed, so I started The Eric Drew
Foundation to help others in need as well.  (www.drewfoundation.org)
Most of these funds went directly to various leukemia patients as well as
the Red Cross to sponsor bone marrow drives  The people in my hometown community
of Los Gatos were fantastic and rallied behind me when they heard of my plight.
From my sickbed I frantically began looking for a matched donor. I recruited
and coordinated volunteer committees and organized the largest bone marrow
registration drive that the San Francisco Bay Area has ever conducted (over
1000 people attended).  Churches and businesses sponsored fundraising receptions,
sports tournaments, and silent auctions that were attended by the Chief of
Police, The Mayor, and hundreds of other prominent people from the community.
The number of people that rallied
for my cause was absolutely amazing and personally inspiring.  The town set
up a website for me and put “Save our Eric” banners and flyers everywhere.
The overwhelming support I received fueled my desire to keep fighting for
my life and the lives of the many others I met during my treatment.  It is
one of the main reasons I am still alive today.

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Chapter 5 – Bad News

Unfortunately these
efforts to find a match were to no avail.  I soon found out that I had a very
unique protein on the DNA in my bone marrow which made it impossible to match
for a transplant.  My best chance for a donor was with a sibling from the
same parents, but I was adopted and had no full siblings.  Not having any
other options I scoured the Internet for conventional treatments, experimental
protocols, herbal remedies, mega-vitamin doses, yoga and other holistic approaches.
I even allowed a Mongolian shaman (medicine woman) to perform a ritualistic
ceremony on me – mostly to placate a friend.  I consider myself a Christian
and do not really believe in such things, but when you’re dying and all conventional
methods have been exhausted, you start grasping at straws and praying a lot.
My instinct to survive was so great, that I was willing to try anything anyone
offered me.

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Chapter 6 – Possibility

The Fred
Hutchinson Cancer Research
Center in Seattle
was experimenting with half matched transplants and had not had much luck
yet, but it was better than my only other choice: checking into a hospice
and giving up.  I do have five half siblings, three of which are half matches.
As an adoptee not knowing any of my blood relatives for most of my life,
I had been blessed to have met both of the families of my biological parents.
It was sort of thrown in my lap as I had not tried to search for them, but
that is another story.  I had grown up with a very close and loving family,
and had not felt a need to seek out my biological parents.  It began when
I met my biological mother when I was twenty, and finally just a couple of
years before I got sick I met the last link in the chain, my sister Alexa.
It is very strange having three families, but also more rewarding and valuable
than I could have foreseen.

Alexa continued
to urge me to come up to Seattle to try this experimental transplant since the “Fred Hutch”
was considered one of the best facilities in the country for bone marrow transplants.
I again confirmed that there was little else they could do for me at Stanford,
so I made the decision to go and began painfully heavy task of putting all
my belongings into storage and giving up my only home.  Having my whole life
packed into boxes and saying goodbye to everyone in my community was devastating
to me, especially since I had such little chance of ever seeing anyone ever
again.  The depth of sadness that I felt was indescribable.

I checked into the
Seattle Cancer Care Alliance in September 2003 and was shocked when I met
with the doctors for the first time and they were candid with me about my
situation. The Philadelphia Chromosome actually had relapsed a few months
before, but for some reason Stanford doctors neglected to inform me of this.
How could the doctors at Stanford not tell me that my disease had relapsed
when they had known for several months???

The “half-match”
transplants were very experimental and the odds of a successful procedure
drop dramatically, from 50% for a normal bone marrow transplant down to 10%,
and even that figure seemed optimistic.  Thirteen such procedures had been
tried before, with ten of the patients dying, two relapsing, and for the most
recent patient, it was too early to tell.  The odds scared me, and I cancelled
the transplant, choosing instead to try shooting from the hip with experimental
mixtures of chemotherapy.  There had to be a better way.

About 10 days after
arriving in Seattle, I began to receive phone calls and letters thanking me for
credit applications I had never submitted.  I informed the banks that this
was a mistake, which I assumed it was, and went on with my battle.  Before
coming up to Seattle I had closed almost all my accounts, and had certainly not
opened any new ones since my arrival.  I figured it must just be a clerical
error and I continued to concentrate on the bigger issues at hand.

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Chapter 7 – Back To The Drawing Board

The chemo treatments
again took their toll.  I was constantly nauseous, aching and disoriented
and had very little strength and energy.  Time was running out for me.  On
Halloween day 2003 I was so ill from these chemos that were not working and
was an emotional wreck, so I decided to go ahead with the transplant after
all.  Three of my half siblings actually qualified as half matches.  It was
during some of the pre-surgery tests that the doctors determined that my half-brother
Michael, whom I had also recently just met, was actually the best match for
the transplant.   I spoke with Michael, he selflessly agreed to the procedure,
and the surgery was scheduled for just before Thanksgiving.

During this time,
the calls from credit card companies continued to come in thanking me for
applications I had not submitted.  Occasionally, the side-effects from the
chemo would subside and I’d experience brief windows where I’d feel well enough
to make some phone calls.  It was during these infrequent “breaks”
that I’d call the banks and explain that I didn’t open any new accounts and
to please NOT open any new lines of credit in my name.  The person on the
phone would thank me for my call and assure me that ‘it would be taken care
of’.  Invariably, it would not.  I had little understanding of Identity Theft
at the time, and wrongly figured that this was just a minor inconvenience
that the credit card companies would take care of.  I couldn’t have been more
wrong.  The paperwork kept mounting, but there seemed to be fewer and fewer
days when I felt well enough to follow up.

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Chapter 8 – Sorry!  Try Again

As the Thanksgiving
transplant date neared and I had undergone the very hard prep chemo and radiation,
there was yet another setback:  Michael had developed mono and it would be
many weeks before he would be well enough to undergo the surgery.  My sister
Alexa was the next best match, and she immediately agreed to do the surgery.
The transplant was scheduled for December 23 2003 and I was informed
that I would have to go through the prep chemo and radiation yet again.

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Chapter 9 – Identity Theft

Then in December
while again preparing for transplant, to add insult to injury, collection
agents began sending letters and calling me demanding payment for “my”
now delinquent accounts.  What accounts!??  As if I didn’t have enough to
deal with battling just to stay alive, now I had these vultures ripping at
me for payment on accounts that were not mine.  They were rude, uncooperative,
and treated me as if I were the criminal.  They said that they needed signed
notarized affidavits to prove that I was who I said I was in order to cancel
these accounts.  Did they need signed affidavits from the criminal who opened
these accounts?  Did they do any diligence to make sure it was me before handing
a credit card in my name to someone at an address I had never lived at?  Obviously
not!  I was so sick I could barely see, much less leave the hospital to prepare
such documents.  This was insane!  It was now easy to see that someone had
stolen my identity and was using my personal information to open new accounts
and charge purchases.  Since these problems started surfacing the week after
my arrival in Seattle and since I hadn’t used my personal
information to set up any other accounts in Seattle,
it was quite apparent – at least to me – that someone on the hospital staff
had stolen my personal information from my hospital records.  I immediately
thought of HIPAA, the new patient privacy laws, and  I realized that I was
now a victim of a Federal crime.  Someone had obviously thought that I had
no chance of making it, and was kicking me while I was down.  I was furious.

Again, I notified
the hospital of my concerns.  Eventually they did send the hospital HIPAA
Compliance Officer, but he was patronizing and simply offered to “look into
it”.  He indicated that they took every precaution to safeguard patient records
and that they did check electronically to make sure no unauthorized person
had accessed my records.  He was confident that my personal information had
not been compromised at the hospital, and if it had there was no way I would
ever prove it.  I demanded that the hospital provide me a list of every hospital
employee that could have touched or seen my file since it was sent here from
Stanford.  He sort of rolled his eyes and again gave me polite lip service.
I informed the Seattle Police as well, but was brushed off again.   In order
to finally get a police report and case number, I had to call the Chief of
Police in my home town of Los Gatos
California, who had become a familiar supporter and friend.

The doctors and
my friends and family were worried about my condition and all advised me to
drop this and fix the issue after I got though the transplant.  By getting
so worked up and emotional, I might actually be hurting the chances of my
transplant being successful. At that time I needed to stay focused on staying
alive.  I would give in and agree and let it go for a day or so, but then
I would receive another call from a collection agent and hit the ceiling.
It infuriated me that someone would have done this to me while I was already
fighting for my life, and the fact that the banks, collection agencies, hospital,
and authorities showed little sympathy enraged me even more.

Back to Table of Contents

Chapter 10 – Bone Marrow Transplant

Finally I did have
to let it go as I began radiation and chemo treatments to prepare for the
transplant.  My new bone marrow from Alexa was infused into the catheter in
my chest on December 23,
2003, over a year after I had been originally diagnosed.  I had a violent
reaction to the transplant and went into severe convulsions.  The dread of
experiencing

my
second Christmas from a dreary hospital room permeated my body.  Again there
were some scary moments for my friends and family as I became very ill with
infections over the next couple of weeks.  Fortunately, I regained consciousness
and, slowly but surely, began to recover and build up my strength.

Back to Table of Contents

Chapter 11 – Identity Theft – Fighting Back

My condition was
declared stable and I was finally released from the hospital in mid January.
I had not thought about anything except surviving for weeks. I was just so
relieved to be getting out of that prison of a hospital room and going back
to my Seattle apartment with my mother to convalesce.
Any sense of well being quickly dissolved when I got back from the hospital
to find a pile of collection notices and phone messages from unknown creditors.
I was so enraged that I vowed to catch the person doing this to me if it was
the last thing I did.  I had to fight back.

I again notified
the Seattle Police who again were totally unhelpful.  They gave me every excuse
as to why they could do nothing; Higher priority cases, lack of any history
of capture and prosecution, and the inability for their limited fraud division
resources to chase after crimes of this nature as they were impossible to
prove.  I didn’t buy it.  They also pointed out that many of the fraudulent
charges did not take place in the actual city of Seattle so these were not
in their jurisdiction, but I was not about to give up.  I resolved to launch
my own investigation from my sickbed, whatever it took. I decided to take
matters into my own hands.

I immediately ordered
a comprehensive credit report through the bank in California
where I was I still officially Vice President.  It contained the precise addresses
in Seattle that were being fraudulently used in my name, and I pulled
myself out of bed to go to this house and take pictures.  I did a property
search through contacts in the title business and located an address for the
owner of the home, only to find out that he was in prison for bank robbery
and murder.

In a response to
a letter I sent to this owner’s contact address, I received a call from a
woman claiming to be the owner’s mother.  She said she knew nothing about
the fraud, but gave me the name and number of the renter who was living there
(last name Gibson).  I called the Gibson woman who denied knowing anything
about the fraudulent activities, although all the fraudulent credit cards
and merchandise was sent to her house.  I reported the names and numbers to
the Seattle Police and requested again that they investigate, but they brushed
me off once more.

I complained to
the hospital again and informed them of the names involved and of the fraudulent
address, demanding that they search all employee records for this address
and any employees with the name Gibson.  They told me that they did a check
and came up with nothing.  I searched out what post office delivered mail
to this address and the names of the supervisors and route carrier.  I tore
into them about delivering mail in my name, and probably the names of other
victims to an address where one woman lived with her two children.  Of course
the postal employees denied any responsibility of delivering fraudulent mail.

I filled out an
FTC report, and began barraging the FBI and the US Postal Inspector’s Office
with phone calls.   The Postal Inspectors agreed to meet with me and take
a statement, but to my knowledge their claims of investigating the case at
all were unsubstantiated.  The Duty Officers at the FBI hung up on me several
times after telling me that FBI doesn’t deal with fraud anymore and to call
the Secret Service.  The Secret Service?  What were they going to do for me?
I was so livid that if I had any hair left after the chemo, I would have been
pulling it out.  I even called the Seattle Mayor’s office and asked if there
wasn’t something they could do to get the police involved.  I never heard
back from them.

Here I was dying
from cancer and some heartless individual had taken advantage of my helplessness
by stealing my identity and going on a shopping spree in my name.  This story
was bound to interest someone!

So, I started creating
official-looking press releases outlining my dilemma, even though I had no
hard evidence that it was a hospital worker.  I wrote releases with headlines
like:

“Hospital Patient’s Identity Stolen by Medical Worker”

“Police and Hospital Refuse to Investigate”

“Mayor’s Office Refuses to Act”

I sent the press
releases to all the local newspapers and television stations with copies to
the Associated Press, the network news offices at ABC, NBC and CBS, and anyone
else I could think of including the Seattle Mayor’s office again.   At first
there was no response, but after a couple of weeks I started getting a few
inquiries about my story.  The Mayor’s office finally called the Seattle Police
and instructed them to take a statement, but the excuses for why they could
not do anything about it kept piling up.

Finally a breakthrough,
the local NBC television affiliate (Seattle’s KING5 News) assigned a reporter to the
case and things really started to get moving.

The reporter, Chris
Daniels, contacted me and asked if they could come by the hospital and do
an interview.  Of course I eagerly agreed.  Under the pretense of health and
security reasons (but more likely the fear of bad publicity and legal consequences)
the hospital refused to allow the TV cameras into the hospital.  Not to be
denied, I demanded that my infusions be stopped and my IV’s be removed.  I
then had myself wheeled outside of the hospital to give my first TV interview.

I had already built
a substantial case file and presented a good argument for my theory. Though
still weak, tired and now completely bald from the chemo treatments, I felt
a surge of strength and confidence as I was wheeled outside.  But when I began
to speak, all the fear, frustration, anger, and pain of the past few months
flooded back, and my voice began to crack as I tried to fight back the tears.
I pulled myself together and managed to get through the interview, and the
story ran on the local news several times that evening.

The public outpouring
of support was immediate and very gratifying.  FINALLY, people were listening.

Tips also started
to come in of possible suspects in the case.   I even met secretly with several
of these tipsters in hopes of getting a lead.  I ventured down to the foggy,
wet Seattle docks; in dark, isolated areas; barely able to walk, with tubes
running out of my chest and wearing a backpack pumping life supporting infusions
into me; and met with some very scary individuals.  It was like something
out of an old gangster flick.  Everyone advised against it, but I was desperate
for information so it seemed like something I needed to do at the time.  None
of these leads panned out and the frustration continued to mount.  Several
weeks went by and I had several near death experiences in the hospital..

Then the big break
came.

When the fraudulent
bills first started coming in, I’d asked the various stores involved to please
review their store video tapes in hopes of identifying the thief who had stolen
my identity.   I received numerous unhelpful excuses, such as:   no cameras
in place… the tapes had already been erased… and, it would take too long to
review all the video.  Basically, nobody was willing to cooperate.  Now since
my interview had been aired on TV and had now been picked up by the local
newspapers, some of the stores were changing their tune.  The manager from
a Lowes home improvement store contacted me and told me they had isolated
video footage of an individual making a purchase in his store at the time
and place indicated on one of the receipts.  The suspect’s appearance also
matched the vague descriptions I had received earlier.

They said that they
would only hand the video to authorities, so I again had to call on the reluctant
police.  They agreed to obtain the video and I arranged for the video to be
sent to KING5 News.  They aired the footage that evening as their lead story
on their 5:00, 7:00
and 11:00 news broadcasts along with another interview
with me.  Together with a recap of my story, they aired the video along with
the following caption, “Have you seen this man?”

My prediction was
right all along.  The police and the news station received over 30 calls identifying
the individual in the video as one Richard Gibson who worked in the transplant
clinic I was being treated at and had seen me almost daily over the last 6
months.  He did not show up for work the next day and the Police were finally
forced to go knocking on his door. Gibson had obviously seen the news reports
himself and had gone into hiding. He was nowhere to be found.  The police
put out an APB and the entire Seattle community was put on alert to look for Richard Gibson.

Three days later,
with his face plastered all over the news and with no place to run, Gibson
turned himself in, being escorted by his attorney.

Gibson was immediately
fired from his job at the hospital, but – unbelievably – was released by the
police the next day.  I was absolutely livid!   After all the pain and suffering,
and hard work I’d gone through, how could they possibly let him go!?  They
probably let him go because they did not have any hard evidence against him.
Of course they didn’t.  I had all the evidence in my file and they did not
attempt to call me to acquire these documents.

The Seattle Police
had barely lifted a finger, and I did not trust them to throw the book at
this guy.  I had spent the last year and a half signing page after page of
HIPAA federal patient privacy papers stating how medical workers are responsible
for my information and could be help criminally liable if using it for “personal
gain”.  If this was not an obvious HIPAA violation, then what was?  I immediately
called the US
Justice Department in D.C who put me through to the US Attorney’s Office.
I demanded justice from the Justice Dept, and they assured me a prosecutor
would be calling me right away.

The next day I received
a call from a guy named Vince Lombardi, who was a head Federal Prosecutor
in Seattle and claimed to be the grandson of the famous football coach
Vince Lombardi.  He commended me on my work and assured me that I would be
assigned a full time prosecutor and a FBI agent to investigate and prosecute
this case.  I received calls from both the following day and was assured the
Federal government would pursue this case.  I met with the FBI several times
and handed over my case file, as well as made video statements just in case
something happened to me in the meantime.

Back to Table of Contents

Chapter 12 – Horror Again

Just about the time
I was feeling a little better and relieved that this ordeal was (I thought)
over, I found out that my bone marrow transplant from my half-sister had failed.
The leukemia was back.  I was devastated.  Most people do not make it through
four leukemia treatments so in a way I was lucky to still be alive.  Again
I was offered hospice care.  “We can make you comfortable” they said.

I offered to go
through another experimental transplant and the doctors agreed.  My half-brother
Michael was over his mono by this time and he again offered to be a donor
for a second attempt.  The thought of going through all the chemo and radiation
treatments again, let alone the painful recovery, was beyond depressing.
At this point I had no other options. I wanted to give it some thought and
I needed to recuperate further, so I went back home to California to get some rest.  The bills and calls from collection agents
kept coming, the banks completely disregarding all the evidence that these
were fraudulent accounts.

After being released
by the police, Gibson apparently thought he was in the clear.  He even went
so far as to file for Unemployment Benefits!  When he was denied benefits,
he had the nerve to file an appeal and had to go before a judge to plead his
case.  Amazingly, in those legal proceedings he admitted that he had stolen
my identity and had committed credit fraud.  His
strategy was unclear, but whatever it was, it backfired.  Having incriminated
himself, that testimony could be used in the case the Feds were building against
Gibson for the HIPAA violation.  Incidentally, when Gibson asked the judge
to reverse his benefit rejection citing that he simply “needed the money”,
the judge retorted that his actions and excuses were outrageous.  He stole
the information from a dying cancer patient and used the credit cards to buy
diamonds, Christmas gifts, camping gear, and other luxury items.  The judge
could not believe the nerve of this man who showed no remorse.

Back to Table of Contents

Chapter 13 – Grasping at Straws Again

While the Justice
Department built up their case against Gibson, I went home to California
to recuperate, but also continued to research my condition.  It appeared that
the half match transplants weren’t working in general.  Still in fighting
mode, I refused to accept defeat and continued my search for other treatment
options.  I spoke with doctors and researchers in Europe
and at every major medical institution around the country.  I called all the
head scientists and researchers.  No US doctor would give me any advice even if they
did know of other experimental possibilities.  This is largely due to liability
issues we have in the US.
We are being burned by our own legal system which has doctors so scared to
offer open advice – a duty that they are by law obliged to provide – that
many people die without knowing all their options.  I intend to share my knowledge
with others by publishing a medical strategy journal through the Eric Drew
Foundation.  www.drewfoundation.org

I wasn’t finding
any options that I qualified for so I packed my bags and headed back to Seattle
to begin preparations for the next half match transplant which still showed
very little promise.  On my way to Seattle I stopped in Portland Oregon
to consult with doctors at the Oregon Health and Science
University (another major transplant center where
they had developed drugs that were keeping me alive between procedures).
They did not have any programs to offer me there either, so I proceeded back
to Seattle.

Eventually it was
a European (Swiss) physician who suggested I re-examine my options with stem
cell transplants from donated umbilical cords.  I had looked into this a
year before on the suggestion of my fiancé Nicole who had read about it in
the news, but the majority of adults who had undergone this procedure at the
time had died horrible and painful deaths. It seemed that one cord blood
was not enough to seed and grow into an adult immune system.  Many hospitals
and clinics around the country had cancelled their adult cord blood programs
because of this, and it seemed too scary and risky of a procedure for me.

On advice from this
Swiss doctor, I went back on to the ClinicalTrials.gov web site and re-contacted
the few hospitals in the US that were still
experimenting with cord blood stem cells.  The new procedures involved stem
sell transplants from two donor placentas and umbilical cord bloods instead
of one.  Even though most of the early patients had died, the patients from
the most recent procedures were showing much better results.  I learned that
they were testing this procedure at the University in Minneapolis, and immediately contacted the hospital.  After discussing
my case, we arranged for a visit to get some testing done and discuss the
pros and cons in greater detail.  I flew to Minnesota and
met with the doctors and found that they were ready to try an even more experimental
procedure – a “double cord blood” transplant.  There was a higher
risk to this new procedure, but it appeared to be my best chance for long-term
survival and recovery.

I returned to Seattle
to discuss options with my doctors and in parallel to pursuing the cord blood
stem cell transplant, I began pre-surgery treatments for my second half-match
transplant, should I decide to take that path.

When I look back
at all the pain and agony I’d gone through over the past few years, it’s hard
to say that I’ve been “lucky”, but I really have.  For one thing,
I’m lucky just to be alive.  By all my doctor’s prognoses, I should have been
dead a long time ago.  But so far I’ve been very lucky to ride the curl of
the wave of new technology.  Nearly every treatment I’ve tried wasn’t available
even a year earlier when I was diagnosed.  Even the treatments that ultimately
failed kept me alive long enough to be around for the next “new thing”.
After a week of painful deliberating and forcing doctors into a consensus
of agreement that I needed a “fully ablative” procedure, I made the choice
to go to Minneapolis and again began packing my life into
bags. Even though they had never tried the new procedure on an adult patient
with ALL, my gut feeling was that it was my best chance for survival.

Back to Table of Contents

Chapter 14 – Stem Cell Transplant

A few weeks later
I was lying in my hospital bed in Minnesota thinking I made a huge mistake.  The
treatments to wipe out any existing cancer – as well as my entire immune system
– were worse than anything I’d experienced before.  In addition to the higher
doses of chemo, I was zapped with 18,000,000,000 volts of gamma radiation
per second for 20 minutes a day for four days.  My skin was a deep red from
burns and I could feel every cell in my body dying.

On July
23 2004, after the intensive ablative procedures to rid my body of the cancer
were finished, the new stem cells were infused into my body.

It was about this
same time, that I received a call from the U.S. Attorney working on my Identity
Theft case.  She told me that they were contemplating a plea bargain with
Gibson, but that they would leave the decision up to me and do whatever I
thought best.  At first, I was totally against it, but with me not in the
best shape to go through a trial, plus a variety of other factors, I began
to see the up side.   I told them, “As long as he pleads guilty to the
first ever HIPAA violation and gets jail time, go for the deal.”  At
this point, I was more then happy to put that whole nightmare behind
me, and I was also happy to be the first one to set a precedent in a case
like this.  Gibson took the plea.

Months of agony
and near death experiences crept by, but I somehow managed to stay alive.
Being too sick to travel, I videotaped a deposition from my hospital bed
and sent it to Seattle to be played in court for the .highly publicized
sentencing hearing.  The story was featured in every major paper in the US,
as well as TV network broadcasts around the country.  CNN did a live satellite
interview with me in Minneapolis,
and Dateline NBC is now producing a documentary on the ordeal.

Back to Table of Contents

Chapter 15- Richard Gibson Prosecuted

Richard
Gibson agreed to the plea deal and, in early November, 2004, he went before
Seattle US Federal District Judge Ricardo Martinez for sentencing.  Gibson
said he was sorry, but the judge didn’t buy it.  Gibson said he was broke
and needed the money, but the judge said, “You didn’t pay a mortgage,
you didn’t pay heating bills.  You bought video games and expensive jewelry.
You took advantage of the position of trust you were in… for the most base
reason of all:  greed.”

Judge Martinez was
so appalled that he had Gibson dragged out of the court and sent directly
to federal prison which was totally unprecedented for a non-violent crime.
He sentenced Gibson to 16 months in prison (4-months longer than prosecutors
had sought).  He was also ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution.  The Judge
said, “This court considers your behavior in this case to be some of
the most deplorable I’ve seen in my 15-years on the bench.  It’s true you
didn’t murder anyone, but in a very real sense you committed a vicious attack
on someone who was fighting for his life.”

When Gibson had first read my medical files and seen that he had a form of
leukemia that was normally fatal, he figured I was any easy target and wouldn’t
be around long enough to fight back.  Richard Gibson was wrong.

Back to Table of Contents

Chapter 16 – A new beginning

I now celebrate
my second Birthday on July
23, 2004, my stem cell transplant day.  On that date, my old immune system
died and a brand new “re-booted” system was born.  At the time of
this writing, I figure I am a little more than a year-old (though quite mature
for my age).  My one year test results show 100% remission from the leukemia,
and I am feeling better than I have felt since my diagnosis nearly three years
ago.   I have been spending as much time as possible vacationing with my (now)
fiancée Nicole, as well as playing sports such as golfing, hiking, kayaking,
swimming, boating and surfing.  I’m happy, getting healthier, and my outlook
is bright.

So what am I going to do now?  A lot of things!  There was a reason that I
was meant to live and given a reprieve from death, and I plan on using the rest
of my time here on earth to making the biggest difference I can.  Besides dealing
with the mess of our inhumane medical system and the three years of sloppy medical
bills they have thrown in my lap, I am also very busy with some extremely important
projects.

Back to Table of Contents

Chapter 17 – The Eric Drew Foundation

One of them is the
Eric Drew Foundation. (www.drewfoundation.org)    I
am continuing to work to help others confronted with cancer and other terminal
diseases.  The non-profit Foundation is working hard raise money for research
and patient care, promoting awareness for stem cell research, promoting the
need for the nationalization of a central cord blood stem cell bank, and
encourages people to sign up for the National Bone Marrow Donor Data Base
which makes finding suitable life-saving donors easier for terminally ill
patients.

Our medical system needs a huge overhaul as it facilitates suffering and despair,
often withholding the best possible treatments from the sick patients who need
them the most.  No US doctor
ever told me about my options with stem cells as it was “experimental” and did
not fit within their “protocols”.  It was finally a European doctor who pointed
me in that direction which saved my life.  If I had not been extremely proactive
in searching all of my options, I would not be here today.  It is also worth
noting that my unwillingness to accept my terminal fate given to me by tens
of doctors over almost 2 years was actually characterized as a disorder.  At
Stanford, the doctors actually diagnosed me with “adjustment disorder” because
I was having trouble accepting what they thought was the inevitable.  Well this
“disorder” has saved my life.  Lack of optimism and empathy for patients and
an unwillingness of medical staff to admit when they simply do not know and
refer patients outside their own institutions is killing millions.  An inhumane
frequency of rotations of student doctors at teaching facilities is resulting
in a severe lack in continuity of care and urgently needs to be addressed.
Pharmaceutical and pain management is horrible even at the best facilities,
and patients need to know that they have options.  I feel it is my duty to give
them some.

Back to Table of Contents

Chapter 18 – KnightsBridge Castle

The banks that issued
Richard Gibson credit without any diligence to make sure it was actually me
applying for this credit and conspired to violate my identity with Richard
Gibson have been notified multiple times that these accounts were fraudulent.
The story has been featured numerous times in the national media, and these
banks had to actually submit testimony and statements to the FBI in the prosecution
of Richard Gibson.  However, for no reason given, they still (as of August
2005) refuse to exonerate me from these accounts and take them off my credit.
I am still showing 90 days past due on my credit report for an account that
was opened by Richard Gibson which has considerable lowered my credit score
and prevented me from receiving approval for a mortgage.  Our banks our robbing
us of our identities for profit and they must be stopped.  The banks charged
interest to these fraudulent accounts opened by Gibson and added many of their
own finance charges etc to these accounts, on top of refusing to close them
in a timely manner when informed that they were fraudulent (so they could
charge more fees).  The merchants are stuck with actually covering the losses
from the merchandise, and the consumers are being stuck with cleaning up the
mess which the banks have created.  The banks, credit agencies, and credit
card companies do not suffer one bit from this and therefore have no motivation
to put a stop to this.  They simply write it off as a cost of business and
may even receive insurance reimbursement, including their ridiculous fees.
Who pays for this?  The American taxpayer and consumer, you and me.  We as
Americans are being robbed by our own financial institutions and then being
left with the responsibility to clean up their mess.  This must stop!

KnightsBridge Castle Inc. (www.knightsbridgecastle.com)  –
I have founded this company with several other identity theft victims and Silicon
Valley execs, and am working hard to build a strong organization to fight the
growing threat of identity theft.  When my identity was stolen, I had nowhere
to turn.  I don’t want anyone else to have to go through that torturous fear
and frustration again.  I am passionate about fighting this crime and helping
identity theft victims take back their lives.

Back to Table of Contents

Chapter 19 – Public Speaking and Legislation

With Dateline
NBC producing a documentary and endless people requesting interviews and presentations,
I am aggressively speaking as much as possible in public forums as well as
to large groups such as corporate gatherings, government organizations, clubs,
Rotaries, and speaker forums.

I am pushing for
new legislation on patient privacy (HIPAA), patient advocacy, stem cell research,
and on the identity theft epidemic.

I am extremely grateful
to everyone who helped and supported me through these years of trials and
tribulations.   I will never forget what you have done for me.

God Bless,

Eric

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