Students donate to save lives

74 students provide blood at the mall

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center hosted a blood drive on the Mall of Pierce College from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Monday.

The blood drive was conducted in conjunction with the Health and Wellness Expo, according to the event coordinator David Keys.

Keys has operated blood donor services at the medical center for more than a decade.

“I’ve been doing this for over 10 years. I helped launch the program at Cedars-Sinai,” Keys said. “I’m an alumni of Pierce. I grew up in the West Valley.”

Ivan Guerrero, a 20 year old sophomore and full-time student studying accounting, experienced first hand how donating blood helps those in need when one of his own family members was involved in a pedestrian accident.

“My sister needed blood once when she got hit by a car,” said Guerrero. "We were kids and she was running after the ice cream truck and it backed up on her and basically severed her arm. She was only 9 years old. It took her about 4 months to recover.”

Giving back to the people is one of Guerrero’s motivations for donating.

“One of the reasons why I donate my own blood is to help other people,” Guerrero said.

Making a donation does not take too much of your time, according to Keys.

“The blood donation itself only takes about 10 minutes. The whole thing together takes about 20 to 30 minutes for the entire process,” Keys said.

Everyone is welcome to register though there are limitations to those who are eligible to donate blood, according to Keys.

“Permanent long-term deferrals, for example, If someone has had leukemia or lymphoma, they can never give blood,” Keys said.

“Other forms of cancer are okay, breast cancer in women, prostate cancer in men. If it has been a year and you’re all cleared and everything is in remission, you can donate blood,” Keys said.

Alicia Mendez, management assistant for Cedars-Sinai blood services, emphasizes that people wishing to donate drink plenty of fluids prior to giving blood.

“The best advice I can give for people who wish to donate is for them to hydrate themselves,” Mendez said. “Drink a lot of water, that helps, and eat before you donate, that’s very important. People think it’s not that important, but it is.” professors, and many other departments were present to ascertain information available to them.

Blood services registered 74 people before closing at 3 p.m. on Monday, according to Mendez.

Karmen Safar and Teresa Frost, Admissions and Records evaluation technicians, came together to the event but for different reasons.

“I wanted to see what was being offered and to get more information about Delta since I have that insurance,” Safar said. “And Regal, they are under Blue Cross and they provided me with a list of all the doctors in all the different cities that I can go to. That’s very good.”

Knowing some of what was available helped her to go exactly where she needed to get the information important to her.

“I just wanted to come see what it was all about. I got a lot of information,”

Frost said. “I thought I would walk away with a pen or something, but I was pleasantly surprised.”

Employees that attended the event were able to enter in a raffle, organized by the district office, that had a prize pack that included 12 gifts from the various vendors.