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Wendy Rigby - KENS 5 Eyewitness News

Kathy Soliz Hernandez, a transplant recipient, is getting a tour of a facility that helped save her life. She suffers from leukemia, and no bone marrow match was available. Doctors turned to a new method — cord blood, a precious resource banked now at The South Texas Blood and Tissue Center.

"I've been so excited. It's really what we've been looking for. It's given us a lot more hope," she said.

Cord blood is taken from the placenta right after birth. After the harvest in the hospital, it's transported to a lab where it's carefully processed. It's weighed, checked under the microscope, tested for disease and finally packaged for future use. The stem cells are stored in nitrogen tanks until a patient with a match needs it.

"Those blood making stem cells can actually repopulate a patient's bone marrow and offer them a healthy resource for generating blood cells of their own," said Mary Beth Fisk, director of The South Texas Blood and Tissue Center.

Ethnicity is crucial to finding a match, and that's why it's important that three San Antonio hospitals and nine other hospitals throughout Texas are helping collect cord blood. The bank has 3,000 donations and needs 15,000. It's free and painless to donate.

"I believe that if you're just going to dispose of it, that would be a waste," Hernandez said. "You have a potential to save a life."

The first cord blood transplant recipient was only 4 years old at the time. He's now 24-years-old, married and a college student.