Early Morning Drain: March 10 Blood Drive to start at 9 am in Richmond Beach

Only 100 pints and your name goes on the donor tree.
Start Saturday March 10 at Richmond Beach.
Photo by Tom Petersen

By Tom Petersen, Richmond Beach Blood Drive Coordinator

The Puget Sound Blood Center’s drives in Richmond Beach will start at 9 a.m. this year, beginning with the March 10 event. The bloodmobile will be at the Shoreline Fire Safety Center, at the corner of Richmond Beach Road and 20th Ave NW. 

Many donors asked for an earlier start. The unit’s morning appointments have been booked solid, and walk-ups have kept the bloodmobile at capacity, so it is hoped that the new hours will relax the rush without turning away donors.

The drives will now end an hour earlier, at 3 p.m.

Juice and cookies
for your blood.
Photo by Tom Petersen

This year’s neighborhood theme is “Win Your Pin!” The PSBC awards a lapel pin commemorating each eight donations (one gallon). Richmond Beach far surpassed its 2011 goal of registering at least two new donors per event, and now it’s hoped that those people will strive for the next honor. Meanwhile, the neighborhood’s regular donors are all now working on their multi-gallon pins!

(Just so everyone knows, the world record is 315 donations.)

The Richmond Beach neighborhood record is 31 donors registered, and 29 pints drawn, at a single event. A blood drive in India in 2010 collected 25,065 pints in one day! Must have had a bigger bus . . .

Appointments can be made online.