By Josh Davis, Red Cross volunteer

As an organization that provides 40% of the blood supply in the U.S., the American Red Cross has a unique responsibility to meet the demand for blood and help ensure it’s available for patients whenever and wherever there’s a need.

Sometimes, Red Cross volunteers even drive much-needed blood supplies overnight and across state lines. Just ask Abraham Klippel, a Red Cross transportation volunteer who lives in southern Maryland.

An early bird, he usually works Thursday morning shifts, starting his day at the Red Cross blood center in Baltimore.

“I get up at two in the morning and I get to Baltimore at 3:30, 3:45, get a car ready and loaded up, and make some deliveries to [hospitals in] southern Maryland,” Klippel said.

In February, there was an urgent need for a rare blood type at a hospital in West Virginia – two states away. A match was found among the Red Cross inventory in Baltimore, and the blood was packed and readied to go with a volunteer driver on a run to West Virginia on a Wednesday night.

“It has to be done within a certain amount of time … so it was quite critical. It had to be there before 8 a.m. on Thursday morning, to be effective for that particular patient,” Klippel explained.

There was an issue with the Wednesday driver, and when Klippel arrived for his regular Thursday morning shift, his supervisor approached him about making the extended trip across several state lines.

“I knew the urgency and so I took it on … and I believe I made it there at 7:45 in the morning with about 15 minutes to spare,” he said.

For Klippel, it was all in a day’s work. But, for the recipient, the extra effort was literally a lifesaver.

“It does make me feel good,” he said. “Being retired, you still want to feel kind of worthy or have some reason for being, and giving back to the community is important to me.

“Many times, I get approached in the hospitals by people saying, ‘thanks for all you do’ when you deliver [blood products and] platelets on time, and I’m just loading my car or unloading. But it definitely lifts the spirits,” he added.

Originally from Holland, Klippel worked for the World Bank for more than four decades. When he retired in 2010, he decided to volunteer for the Red Cross to stay busy.

“[The Red Cross] is an organization that I have a lot of respect for and it’s worthy to give some of my time back to,” he said. “Most of my life I was working for the World Bank, which is also mostly humanitarian work. So, the Red Cross was a good match for me.”

For those thinking about volunteering – or donating lifesaving blood with the Red Cross – Klippel said the act is simple, but the rewards are great.

“This is probably one of the things that you hear the least about, and it happens every day,” he said. “I think we have close to 100 drivers from the Baltimore blood processing center, and we take over 200 deliveries a month to area hospitals in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. So, there's a lot of stuff going on in the background that people don't know about from the Red Cross. But it's critically important.”

The American Red Cross needs to collect about 12,500 blood donations every day to meet the needs of patients at about 2,500 hospitals and transfusion centers across the country – including roughly 50 hospitals in the National Capital and Greater Chesapeake Region.

The need for blood is constant. Every two seconds, someone in the U.S. needs blood. Learn more and sign up to donate at RedCrossBlood.org.