71-Year Beverly Hills Red Cross Volunteer Talks Donating Blood

BEVERLY HILLS, CA — Beverly Hills locals will donate their blood at the Beverly Hills Women's Club Thursday as the nation faces a dire blood shortage.

This is the third week of the American Red Cross's emergency blood shortage, according to The Ironton Tribune. Blood supplies have fallen to the lowest post-summer level the country has seen in six years.

As such, the Red Cross has been desperately reaching out to Americans for blood donations. Beverly Hills resident and long-time Red Cross volunteer Valeda Adler hopes to see her community show up Thursday to answer this national call.

Call To Action From A Red Cross Volunteer

Andler has been volunteering for the Red Cross since 1950. Her husband — then a neurosurgery resident — wanted her to stop working when they got married, but Andler didn't want her new nursing degree to go to waste.

So she started working blood drives, teaching classes, recruiting nurses and even appeared on TV with the Red Cross in 1950. To this day, Andler thinks people often don't realize how much work the Red Cross does beyond blood drives, especially the organization's disaster work.

Andler, a Beverly Hills local, will be volunteering at the Beverly Hills drive Thursday.

Adler has helped organize many blood drives in Beverly Hills before, and even brought a mobile blood drive to her country club about 20 years ago. While Beverly Hills locals have become more willing to participate in Red Cross activities than before, she said, she would still like to see more participation.

"What I'd like to see is more people coming out," Andler said. She added: "It would be great to get more people our helping their neighbors. One-on-one [philanthropy] is nice but if you work for a bigger organization [like the Red Cross], you can get to more people."

Background

The amount of blood donations has gone down sharply in recent months due to the spread of the delta variant of COVID-19, school starting back up and people going back to their busy lives, said Nina Minton, account manager for the Red Cross.

Additionally, COVID-19 restrictions have made blood drives at schools nearly impossible. This is a major problem, Minton said, given schools are generally the Red Cross's biggest source of post-summer blood donations.

Office spaces have also proven difficult for blood drives given so many people are still working from home, Minton said.

Sign up to give a blood donation on the Red Cross website.