A blood drive was held at RBHS on February 24 for students 16 or older and staff willing to donate blood. The blood collected was extremely important for helping the community.

“Student Association is very much about helping our community and helping not just our school community but our community around us,” Student Association sponsor Michele Koehler said. “Donating blood just helps so many people.”

By having the blood drive in February, more students were able to donate blood.

“We also span [the blood drives] out so that way we try to miss a lot of the sporting,” Koehler said.

February is also a very good time to have a blood drive.

“In the Chicagoland area, especially in wintertime, we always have a blood shortage,” Koehler said. “This is just an easy way for our students to give back to the area, to give back to anybody that would need that and they’re feeling like they’re helping out.”

Although around 161 individuals signed up for the blood drive, Koehler knew that not all of them would show up due to illness or some other reason.

“We would love to have at least 130, maybe even more than that, that actually donate,” Koehler said.

The blood drive also helps RBHS directly.

“Depending upon how many pints of blood we donate, as kind of a thank you, they will donate money back to us which we put directly to a scholarship that seniors get to apply for so we can give that money back to our student body as well,” Koehler said.

The Red Cross was able to set up the blood drive event even though RB does not normally have a system set up for collecting blood.

“The Red Cross nurses and their staff come in and turn our Alumni Lounge basically into a whole facility for donations, so they have all of the check-in sites, you know, to do the pre-test, and all of that there. Then they have all of the different chairs set up for donations, and they can do regular blood donations as well as whole plasma donations so it’s gotten more and more complex as the years have gone on, which is really awesome that they have that opportunity to do a mobile blood drive like that at these locations,” Koehler said.

Koehler is proud of all that the students do for the blood drive and other donation events.

“Our students here are very caring and they get very into a lot of what we do,” Koehler said. “It’s nice to see our student body come together for various things.”