Volunteer and Cerritos College student James Trazo sat outside of the American Red Cross Bloodmobile on Thursday, Feb. 14, greeting and checking-in students, who were making the preparations to save lives.
The American Red Cross has a history of visiting Cerritos College during Valentine’s Day week and was present in Falcon Square from Feb. 11 to 14, collecting nearly 335 pints of blood from generous students.
“The process of donating blood is actually easy,” Trazo added “You just sign in with your club name, wait to be screened and tested for things such as iron levels, and then you’ll be informed if you can donate or not.
“If so, you’ll go into the RV, donate and in about four to six weeks you’ll get a card in the mail telling you your blood type and other interesting information.“
Multiple clubs on campus took part in the donation process, holding a competition amongst themselves as to who could tally up the most pints for a certain club within the four days.
Rob Torrez, a field manager for the American Red Cross, felt that the multiple clubs participating made this blood drive the best of the year.
“Some of the clubs really go all out…the winning club will receive a beautiful crystal blood drop award at the spring banquet, and a pizza party.
“[The American Red Cross is] here in September, November, February, April and a couple of days in the summer… but what we like to call ‘Valentine’s (Day) week’ is always our best turnout.”
The donations made by the community at Cerritos College will save a number of lives according to Torrez, who stated that high schools and colleges hosting the blood drives serve a vital part in what the American Red Cross is able to do.
While up to one pint of blood can be drawn from each donator, it can save up to three people.
Torrez, while doing the math with assistance of his fingers, concluded that, “With the amount of donations from the college this week, we have saved over 1,000 lives”.
According to this calculation, Cerritos College will potentially save a total of 927 lives based on the 385 people who registered throughout the week.“Out of every three pints of blood collected daily, at least one is from a high school or college,” Torrez explained.
“We take your red cells, white cells, plasma, platelets, all which are very important later on, totaling up to one pint taken per person.”
He added, “Of course after you donate blood is the fun part, where you get all of the cookies and juice that you want”.
According to RedCrossBlood.org, some body in the United States needs blood every two seconds. More than 44,000 blood donations a day are necessary to keep up with the demand.
The American Red Cross will be back in April.
Of course, eligible donors can always go to the Red Cross website at RedCrossBlood.org and either search for the nearest blood drive or make a blood donation appointment by clicking the big blue button on the top right corner of the webpage.
