Every year, Student Council partners with Carter BloodCare to host blood drives. The first one of the year happened Wednesday, Oct. 2.

With the passing of Jessica Chance, a senior and regular blood donor, StuCo decided to dedicate this first blood drive of the year to her.

“One of her final acts was donating her organs to save other lives,” StuCo adviser and math teacher Chad Cooke said. “So we wanted to do this in her memory, just to kind of honor the fact that she lived her life by donating to others constantly.”

The dedication to Jessica helped urge more people to come and donate.

“I think it’s really important that we have community support for everything through her because even if I wasn’t the closest friend to her, I think it’s important that we all help her friends and family that were really close,” senior Cameron Mauerhan said.

Not only is the reason behind the blood drive significant, but donating blood is important and positively affects people.

“Lots of people in the world need blood, and it’s a great way to help save lives because each person who donates, saves three lives,” senior Madison Aniasco said. “So it’s really important for younger people to get out there and start volunteering, and helping others in the simplest way possible.”

Since we’ve been partnering with Carter Bloodcare for so long, Cooke and StuCo were selected over the summer to receive a grant. 

“The grant is kind of like a drawing; basically every school that does at least three blood drives, and they meet their goal– like our goal was 120 units of blood donated–if we reach that every blood drive, and then we also attend one of their leadership training’s, we get entered into a raffle to be eligible to get the grant,” Cooke said.

The goal may have been 120 units, but this drive far surpassed that. According to Cooke, unofficially, this was the largest blood drive the school has ever hosted with participants donating 178 units of blood. 

“The blood drive is so important to me because I myself cannot give, so it’s a way to kind of give back even though I’m not able to give blood,” Cooke said. “And high school students are all on one campus, everyone likes getting out of class, so it’s kind of like ‘I get out of class, and I get to save lives.’”