Walter Lee

MySQL coworker, Andrii Nikitin, needs urgent help so his 2.5 years old son, Ivan, can get an urgent bone marrow transplant

Thursday Jul 10, 2008

This is a personal posting and not related to work at Sun.

I got an email and think this needs some urgent attention, so posting it here.

MySQL is now part of Sun and we have some wonderful colleagues inside MySQL.

I got an email today , and its summary is

Subject: A humble, but urgent, request to help Andrii Nikitin and his son Ivan

From: Zack Urlocker <zurlocker-AT-mysql-DOT-com>

Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:04:33 +0200

To: marketing-private-AT-mysql-DOT-com, 'Boel' <boel-AT-mysql-DOT-com>, 'Georg Richter' <Georg.Richter-AT-sun-DOT-com>

Folks,

First of all, let me apologize for the spam email. We all get too much

email, but I hope you will take a few minutes to read and act upon this one.

It is one of those rare cases where if we all pitch in, it can make a huge

difference in someone's life. Not to put too fine a point on it, it may

make the difference between life and death for Andrii's son Ivan.

Andrii Nikitin is one of our support engineers located in Ukraine. His son

Ivan, who is 2 1/2 years old, requires a bone marrow transplant. Right now,

the estimate of the cost of this operation is somewhere between $150,000 and

$250,000.

I would ask you to strongly consider two things:

1. Will you please make a donation to support Andrii and his son?

2. Will you please encourage other colleagues to do likewise?

We have all been very fortunate at MySQL and hopefully we have been blessed

with healthy families. I hope you will consider making a donation --in

whatever amount --to help out.

Boel, Georg Richter, Dave Madsen and others are working to see what is

possible in terms of donation matching and some other creative ideas for

fund raising. But there is great urgency here. Ivan's health has taken a

turn for the worse and there could be very little time indeed.

I encourage you to act immediately. You can write a check payable to MySQL

in the US or in Sweden. Boel and Linda Dong will take care of the details.

MySQL is an exceptional company. So please let us demonstrate how we

dolphins work together to help out one of our own in need. Join me in

making a donation to help Ivan.

Thanks for considering this request.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Make the check payable to: MySQL, Inc.

Mail to:

MySQL, Inc.

Attn: Linda Dong

20450 Stevens Creek Blvd #350

Cupertino, CA 95014

--Zack