Friday, March 22, 2002 | 9:34 a.m.
When 5-year-old Chantyl Peterson didn't know the firefighter's name and was too young to really understand, she just called him "Mr. Nice Man."
Mr. Nice Man had saved her life, but not in the way firefighters usually do. She was sick and needed healthy bone marrow.
The little girl in Henderson and the New York City firefighter were a perfect match.
A year after the bone marrow transplant, she learned his name. Terry Farrell hadn't even told his five brothers he signed up to donate.
Chantyl and Farrell later would exchange phone calls, letters and even got together in New York. They took the fireboat around New York Harbor and ate lunch -- in the World Trade Center.
In October, Chantyl, now 13, traveled to New York to see Farrell for a third and final time.
He died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and she read a prayer at his funeral.
"He's just a hero for what he's done," the teenager says. "I don't think I'll ever be able to meet another guy like him."
Her mother had always thought her daughter looked pale. There were nose bleeds and constant bruises. She was only 3 when she was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a disease that stops the function of bone marrow. The only cure was a transplant.
But her parents weren't a match for Chantyl. Neither was her brother, nor her sister. Chantyl needed marrow from a stranger.
Her name was put into the National Marrow Donor Program registry, the world's largest with 4.5 million volunteer donors.
Doctors told her mother that Chantyl had a 1 in 20,000 chance of finding a match.
"They told us it might not happen, that we might not find a match," says Chantyl's mother, Sheri Peterson.
But there was hope.
Terry Farrell, a 45-year-old married father of two from Huntington, N.Y., was No. 1 on the list of five possible matches. He was a firefighter with Rescue Company 4 and volunteered for the Dix Hills Fire Department.
Farrell went for additional testing required for the transplant.
"They told us they had a perfect match for her," Sheri Peterson says.
Her parents, now separated, delayed the transplant after an experimental drug seemed to help Chantyl. But when she was 5 a biopsy found a mass in the little girl's chest. This time, it was t-cell lymphoma and a bone marrow transplant was the only option.
Her mother worried the donor might not want to undergo the uncomfortable procedure or that he was no longer available. But he was.
A nurse showed Chantyl a jigsaw puzzle map of the United States and pointed to New York.
"She said, 'your donor lives right over in here,' " her mother says.
For 45 minutes on July 10, 1993, Farrell's bone marrow was put into Chantyl intravenously at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. His marrow turned her type AB blood into his A positive blood.
Chantyl drew a picture for her donor of a little girl being rescued from a fire. "For my friend, Mr. Nice Man. Mr. Nice Man is saving Chantyl from a fire," she wrote.
The transplant was a success, and she left the hospital the next month a healthy little girl.
Chantyl and Farrell wrote letters back and forth, with the donor program forwarding the correspondence. Names of donors and recipients are kept anonymous for one year after a transplant.
Chantyl thanked her donor for his "tough" blood.
Farrell wrote back to his "little lady."
"I don't want you to become too tough with my blood," he wrote in a Sept. 22, 1993, letter. "Remember you are still a beautiful little girl. My small contribution to you is only half the battle, the other half is yours. I know you are a fighter just by your letter alone."
When the year ended, they learned each other's names, and on Aug. 18, 1994, Chantyl and her family flew to New York to meet Terry Farrell.
Kevin Farrell says he didn't even know his brother had signed up for the program.
That was his way -- quiet, unassuming.
"When I talked to him about it afterward, I got a grin out of him," Kevin says. "If you got a grunt out of him, it was a long conversation."
Chantyl wore a new, pink frilly dress in honor of their first meeting. Farrell wore his uniform. She rode his fire truck, and the two families went on a picnic and made brownies together at Farrell's home.
One day, the 6-year-old ate lunch with Farrell on the 87th floor of the World Trade Center in the office of one of his friends. Her mother took pictures of Chantyl and Farrell sitting at a table by a window overlooking the city.
The phone calls and letters continued. Chantyl told Farrell about Fire Prevention Week at her school. She had learned how to stop, drop and roll.
Five years after their first meeting, Chantyl and her family returned for a surprise visit in September 1999. They rode the fireboat again and shared doughnuts.
"I just remember hugging him, saying we'll see you in another five years," Sheri Peterson says.
On Sept. 11, Terry Farrell was gone.
Chantyl had been in her bedroom, but heard her mother on the telephone.
"She came out of the room and said, 'Is Terry in trouble? Does he need my help? Do I need to give him some blood?' I told her we really need to pray for him."
Farrell's body was found Oct. 25 in the rubble of the south tower of the World Trade Center. He, like so many others, died trying to rescue others.
The Peterson family flew to New York a third time, this time to say goodbye to the firefighter who had saved Chantyl. She recited part of the closing prayer at his funeral.
"If it weren't for Terry, Chantyl would not be 13 years old today," says Helen Ng, spokeswoman for the National Marrow Donor Program in Minneapolis. "Who knows what Chantyl is going to be able to do with the rest of her life?"
Fellow firefighter Mark Kwalwasser met Farrell through the New York City firefighters' bone marrow donor program that Kwalwasser started in 1989, the year before his sister died of cancer while waiting for a donor. To honor his friend, Kwalwasser is adding Farrell's name to the Elaine Deidrich Memorial Donor Program and hopes to expand it nationwide.
Inside her Henderson apartment with her mother, Chantyl finishes her math homework near the computer that has "I love Terry Farrell" as the screen saver. She keeps a photo album of him in her bedroom and his pictures on the breakfast bar.
"I think that he's an angel," her mother says. "When he saved Chantyl's life, he saved a family."
Chantyl is a healthy seventhgrader who loves horseback riding and swimming, and plays the flute in the school band.
In the nine years Farrell was on the donor list, Chantyl was his only match. She likes knowing he saved her, that her quiet hero lives on in her.
"I keep thinking he was actually meant for me," she says.
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