Chapel Hill High’s Red Cross Club held a blood drive on April 21, allowing students and staff 16 and older to donate blood to the American Red Cross.
The drive was held in the school’s lower gym, with multiple medical workers and student volunteers helping to take the blood of student and staff donors.
Despite having a needle stuck in her arm for an hour, senior Katherine Soong was dedicated to supporting a good cause.
“One of my friends gave her blood, so I thought, ‘Why shouldn’t I, too?’” Soong said. “Even though it took me an hour because my blood ran slow, before I knew it, it was over.”
Other students volunteered to be involved in something unique on an otherwise normal school day.
“I was bored and heard about [the drive] on the announcements,” senior Ava Allore said. “It felt like something I should experience. It went really fast, which surprised me—it only took eight minutes.”
The Red Cross Club is made up of over 60 students—20 active in the month of April—and is led by sophomore Tanvi Gaur and senior Leslie Jaimes, who put together the club’s first drive of the school year.
This year, the club was limited to taking blood from just staff and students; in the past, the club has invited community members to donate blood. Altogether, over 30 donors contributed to the blood drive.
“The turnout was unexpected,” Jaimes said. “The club wasn’t really active last year because of the pandemic, so our members were all new students just joining. They were really eager to help out and got their friends to donate.”
The club expected to receive 30 units of blood, a number the club narrowly exceeded thanks to a rare “power-red donation,” which only donors with A-, B- and O blood types are capable of giving. Workers used a special machine to extract two units of red blood cells and return the plasma and platelets back into the donor’s body, bringing the club’s total to 31 units.
The Red Cross club hopes to hold two blood drives next year, with an additional event in November. Altogether, the Red Cross Club has collected 397 units of blood through eight drives.
