Saving lives on a sunny Saturday: Blood donors offer ‘A Pint for Kim’
Outside Naperville North High School on Saturday, a mini-fest — with kids’ activities, inflatable attractions, live music, food trucks and a car show — was taking place. Inside, donors participating in the sixth annual “A Pint for Kim” blood drive were saving lives.
Described as the state’s largest single-day blood drive, the annual event was inspired by Kimberley Benedyk Sandford, a Naperville wife and mother of two sons diagnosed in 2012 with a rare combination of two different cancers. For eight years, she battled the disease, enduring surgeries and chemotherapy. As it does with many cancer patients, the chemotherapy caused anemia which was diagnosed in December 2019 and subsequently required her to have dozens of blood and platelet transfusions.
According to apintforkim.com, “Kim was only able to receive these transfusions because strangers somewhere woke up one day and decided to selflessly donate blood.”
In early 2020, Sandford and her family began organizing a blood drive scheduled for March 8 of that year. Sandford did not live to see it. On March 3, 2020, she died. Per her request, the blood drive took place as planned.
Partnering with Versiti Blood Center of Illinois, which provides blood products and services to more than 80 Northern Illinois and Northwest Indiana hospitals, organizers arranged for 50 appointments the first year. When those filled up, they added 50 more. By the end of the drive, 400 people had donated, said Kristyn Benedyk, Sandford’s sister.
Having outgrown its first two locations, “A Pint for Kim” relocated several years ago to the high school Sandford’s sons attend. Held on the Saturday before Mother’s Day, it has become a become a community tradition with the number of pints increasing every year. This year Benedyk expects that number to exceed 620.
Most of the donations go to cancer patients, who make up the majority of blood recipients, Benedyk said.
For patients and their families, such donations are invaluable. In Sandford’s case, “those blood transfusions gave us more time with her,” Benedyk said.
“There will always be a need,” she said. “There is no substitute for blood and the only way we can get blood is through people.”
This blood drive in particular has enormous community support, said Versiti account representative Sarah Horne, who recalled “lines out the door” for the initial event.
One donation, requiring an hour or less from a volunteer, can save three lives, said Horne, adding that the donations collected Saturday will be in hospitals by Tuesday.
“I don’t know what else we can do with our lives that has that kind of impact,” she said.
Reading about Sandford’s story inspired Allan Mendelson and his wife Raquel Hernandez to travel from Oak Lawn to donate blood.
“It’s such a great cause,” said Mendelson, a double donor who donated two pints of blood (instead of the typical one pint) through a process called apheresis which separates red blood cells from plasma and platelets and then returns the plasma to the donor.
Hernardez’s elevated blood pressure kept her from donating Saturday, but she says they will return next year to donate a pint … or two.
“It’s such a small sacrifice,” she said, “and you make such a great impact.”