The efforts of blood drive coordinators throughout the state were applauded in February.

Fountain Hills Noon Kiwanis was honored with the Hero Award at Valentines for Life, the premier annual awards event for Vitalant (formerly known as United Blood Services). The Hero Award is Vitalant’s most prestigious honor. The honor is reached by only three percent of blood drive coordinators across Arizona.

According to Vitalant, the Fountain Hills Noon Kiwanis is an outstanding example of civic group participation in the community blood program. This is the 14th consecutive year the club has been awarded with the Hero Award.

Paul Appeldorn and Dr. Liz Smith take their jobs as blood drive coordinators seriously and have become known around town as the “Fountain Hills vampires” due to their tireless efforts. They enlist the help of the Kiwanis group to man the registration table and go all over town strategically hanging posters for the drive.

Appeldorn and Dr. Smith personally work with The Times to publish photos and articles that help attract new donors. The two have partnered with Sofrita and Little Caesar’s Pizza to provide snacks for donors to eat after they have given blood.

Appeldorn and Dr. Smith even went the extra mile in 2018 and brought some of their regular donors to tour the Vitalant lab in Tempe to get a behind the scenes look at how blood is tested and typed before it goes out to the local hospitals. Their efforts resulted in 698 blood donations last year.

Last year, volunteer blood drive coordinators from 1,476 organizations hosted 3,572 blood drives across Arizona, which provided 95,312 blood donations. Because blood can be separated into components to benefit multiple patients, those donations saved about a quarter million lives.

Honored guests at the Valentines for Life event heard an inspiring story from a man named David, who is alive today with the help of 39 blood donors. In March 2017, his doctor sent him to the ER where an oncologist confirmed that David had leukemia and would have survived only three or four weeks had he not come to the hospital.

David spent 100 days in the hospital over the next nine months enduring rounds of chemotherapy, overcoming medical setbacks and receiving blood transfusions. He heard the words “your cancer is in remission” on Dec. 19, 2017.

“Blood donors gave me a chance to get married and see another birthday and Christmas,” David said. “I am so inspired by their sacrifice.”

The next blood drive in Fountain Hills is scheduled for Friday and Saturday, April 12 and 13. To make an appointment, call Dr. Smith at 480-837-2600 or 480-206-4785; or Appeldorn at 480-837-8213. Donors also can sign up online at bloodhero.com and use the sponsor code, Kiwanis.