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Jordan Smith

The Red Cross Club held their fifth blood drive on March 28. The Red Cross made posters with the slogan "Give hope this spring."

On Friday, March 28, the American Red Cross came to West High for the fifth blood drive in collaboration with the Red Cross Club. The event was in the Dance Room from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The drive collected 50 units, 10 more than their 40-unit goal. Successful donors received a $10 Amazon e-gift card and A1C testing, which screens for prediabetes and diabetes.

38 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, and 8.7 million have undiagnosed diabetes, but they don’t usually have symptoms until the condition has developed and damaged organs.

Through March this year, the Red Cross offered the Hemoglobin A1C test, one of the most common blood tests to diagnose diabetes. It measures the percentage of hemoglobin in red blood cells bound to glucose, providing the average blood sugar level over the past three months.

Scores below 5.7% are considered normal, 5.7%-6.4% are correlated with prediabetes and greater than 6.5% is a sign of diabetes. Donors will receive their test results in one to two weeks in their donor account in the Red Cross Blood Donor App or at redcrossblood.org.

Aside from students, school blood drives are also available to the community. 

After the blood drive, community member Sandy McGregor has donated a gallon of blood with the Red Cross. Initially, she donated plasma in college for money but she couldn’t after studying abroad in Great Britain.

“When I got back and tried to donate plasma again, they said I would never be able to donate plasma or blood because of mad cow disease, because I lived in Great Britain for more than three months,” McGregor said.

Then, about six years ago, her best friend’s two-year-old son got diagnosed with leukemia and had 21 blood transfusions.

“I was just looking for something I could do to kind of honor him, and so I reached back out to the Red Cross…” she said. In 2022, the FDA revoked its recommendation to defer people who had traveled to the U.K., France or Ireland from 1980 to the present, and the Red Cross followed suit. “Since then, I’ve been donating as often as I’m able to.”

West High alum Cordell Braverman ’80 also reached a donor milestone of one gallon with his donation at West’s blood drive. He’s been donating as often as possible for the last three years.

Although it’s common to feel tired or worn out after donating, he doesn’t experience much discomfort. In fact, he feels rejuvenated.

“It makes me feel good, in terms of not just doing a good thing, but physically. Everybody says, ‘Donate blood; for the next couple days, for a minute, you got to take the rest of the afternoon kind of slow,’ but it kind of rejuvenates your immune system and your bone marrow to make new red blood cells. So it’s [a] benefit to me too, personally, not just the charitable aspect,” Braverman said.

Community member Thomas Boring has donated 73 times to give 97 units, which is 12 gallons of blood. Since a pint of blood saves three lives, he has saved 288 lives alone. 

Years ago, his brother was in a car crash and needed blood. This, along with his rare blood type of B- which only 2% of the world has, jump-started his long career of donating.

The Red Cross Club has held four other drives in the past three years. They have held an annual spring drive since April 1, 2022, and they had their first winter drive on December 13, 2024, setting a precedent for a biannual blood drive in the future. 

In the past, West High has also held blood drives in collaboration with the DeGowin Blood Center at the University of Iowa. They were run in a similar fashion, with similar eligibility requirements and rewards, though DeGowin offered senior donors a raffle for a scholarship.

The Red Cross Club has big plans for the next school year. They’ll continue with two drives: one in winter and one in spring. There’s also talk of setting up a community run for a cause and other volunteer opportunities. 

Though there aren’t any solid dates for these events yet, future school drives will be available on redcrossblood.org with sponsor code ‘WestHigh’ and more information will be posted on the Red Cross Club’s Instagram account.

Over the summer, donors still have opportunities to donate outside of school drives. Along with other Red Cross blood drives in the area, blood centers like DeGowin and ImpactLife offer blood and platelet donation services as well.