By Nikhitha Raigir

At a Sound the Alarm event, a young girl in a bright red Buddy the Blood Drop costume dances her way through a crowd, cracking jokes and making people smile. Her arms are short, but her energy is limitless. Her name is Trinity, she is around ten years old, and she is already an official Red Crosser.

Her mother, Dr. Aja Murphy, made it official. Dr. Murphy is a board member with the American Red Cross and a physician who has organized sickle cell blood drives across the region, working to increase donations for patients who depend on frequent transfusions. She has been volunteering with the Red Cross for years. And wherever she goes, Trinity goes too.

A Sense of Duty, at Any Age

For Dr. Murphy, bringing Trinity along is intentional. Community service, she says, instills a sense of duty that reaches beyond the family. It also creates something harder to find: meaningful time together.

What Dr. Murphy hopes Trinity takes away goes beyond any single event. She wants her daughter to witness what compassion, teamwork, and resilience look like, especially in moments when people are at their most vulnerable.

“I also hope she gains a sense of perspective,” Dr. Murphy says. “More than anything, I want her to continue to grow into someone who leads with empathy, steps up when others need help, and understands the value of giving her time and energy to something bigger than herself.”

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Trinity has taken that message to heart. At Sound the Alarm, she helped install smoke detectors in homes and met families in her community. She knew what it meant.

At other events, Trinity gets to be Buddy the Blood Drop, dancing and telling jokes until stranger’s smile. She is quick to note the costume’s limitations: “I can only do some dance moves because of Buddy’s short arms, AKA my arms.”

What makes her proudest of her mother is simple. “She saves lives and helps people,” Trinity says. “She inspires me to help others and think about ways to make a difference.” That is what she wants to do when she grows up.

A Legacy in the Making

This Mother’s Day, the American Red Cross celebrates the volunteers who show up, and the mothers who bring the next generation with them. Dr. Murphy is building something no certificate can capture: a child who believes, from her earliest years, that ordinary people can make a real difference.

Trinity is not just watching. She is already following, and in her own way, already leading.
 

Ordinary people. Extraordinary impact.