Thirty-eight students, teachers and parents heeded the call to give blood as part of a Red Cross Club-hosted drive in the library on Jan. 21. It was the school’s first blood drive since 2018.
The club exceeded its goal of 30 donors. Due to the age requirement, donors needed to be at least 16 and meet the minimum height and weight requirements to participate. Health forms and precautions like blood pressure, heart rate and temperature were measured before the drawing.
Throughout the day, students were pulled out of their classes for the donation and despite some concerns about attendance from teachers, the process went smoothly overall.
“We had a predetermined schedule that we sent to Ms. Armes for her to excuse specific people for a certain time slot. We also had student volunteers called “runners” who went to classes to specifically take out students and then later return them back to class,” senior club treasurer Shreya Raghuvanshi said.
Senior Angie Chen was among the 27 seniors who participated in the blood drive.
“The experience was OK,” she said. “The needle going in is a little bit scary, and I was a little bit light headed afterwards. A little bit of discomfort is worth it, because you are helping to save lives.” The Red Cross estimates that three or four successful blood drive events can help save 500 lives.
Chen explained that donating blood through the school is a very safe process. The event volunteers and organizers made sure donors were able to recover afterwards with juice boxes, water and snacks.
“I was initially super nervous but the technicians calmed me down and the shot was completely painless,” English teacher Marcos Cortez said. “I would absolutely want to do it again as the drive is a relatively simple thing that helps an enormous amount of people. Blood is something I have readily available and can donate easily, unlike money.”
The school cafeteria was also involved in the drive, helping make dessert for all the donors to get their sugar levels back up.
“(Assistant principal Kristen) Cunningham asked the cafeteria to make berry cobblers because Los Gatos did something similar where they advertised a pint of ice cream for a pint of blood. Our cafeteria has certain food rules and can’t give out ice cream, so they ended up finding an alternative,” Raghuvanshi said.
Since this year was the first drive at SHS in seven years, it was more of a test run to see how big the turnout of students would be. “Since this is the first time we are doing the blood drive after COVID, we had to be very cautious but the drive ended very smoothly and safely,” Raghuvanshi said. “As long as the teachers are fine with it, we are planning to host it again next year.”