Colliers’ Cole Hooper: Hero On & Off the Field

In spring 2010, Colliers International associate Cole Hooper was a college football player at Brown University helping his football team register students, faculty and staff for a Be The Match bone marrow testing drive. After some hesitation, Cole registered to be part of the program. Fast forward to January 2015 and Cole received an unexpected call from the 401 area code. Expecting it to be his alma mater asking for some money, he picked up the phone and was surprised to hear from the University of Rhode Island Bone Marrow Center; he was a possible match for a 61-year-old Italian woman with leukemia.

Cole was asked to provide some blood samples (the initial registration is just a cheek swab). Three months later, he got the call that he was the best match for this woman, who had started intensive chemotherapy. Again, Cole contemplated his decision, seeking advice from his former football coaches. They pushed him to do it. Since the football team’s community service drive started in 2009, two other Brown football players became matches and donated their bone marrow, as well, Cole tells us. He called them for more intel on the procedure before making the decision to go for it.

Cole (right, with Colliers SVP and former Brown football player Ward Richmond) gave the University of Rhode Island center the thumbs up. They set him up at Cook’s Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth (it had to be a site to see this 6’5", 275-pound man amidst all the child-sized equipment). In this case, the bone marrow harvest was a surgical procedure, using needles to withdraw liquid bone marrow from his pelvic bone. He had surgery at 7:30am and was out of there by 11am. He took a week off work to recover and had to ramp up his workouts again over the course of a month, but now there are no signs of the procedure other than a small scar, he says. The surgery didn’t slow him down in the office; right around the time of the procedure, Cole and Ward inked more than 350k SF of leases, including 100k SF in Mercer Business Park for The Stone Collection; 158k SF for Cartamundi US at 3061 W Saner Ave in Dallas; and 57k SF in the Luna IV development for Dynamex Operations East. The duo has closed deals in more than 30 North American cities since Cole joined Colliers last year.