CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Despite the stormy morning, it was a packed house at the Mansion Royal on Tuesday, filled with students, staff and blood drive administrators from across 52 Coastal Bend high schools.
It was for the Coastal Bend Blood Center's annual "High School Heroes" awards luncheon honoring the efforts by all the school districts to collect life-saving blood donation over the past school year.
According to the CBBC, high schools alone account for 30 percent of the blood supply collected for communities, and this year, 12,034 units of blood were collected by Coastal Bend high school students over this last school year.
"We're grateful - that's the word, grateful, that they really step up and unite together to make sure that they're saving lives," said Ashley Ramirez, community relations & education coordinator for the CBBC.
"These high school students at a young age are giving back to the community in a way that's so special they're saving lives, and it doesn't get better than that."
This year, 1,922 area high school seniors will receive their red cords at graduation through their blood drive efforts.
All schools brought in impressive numbers of blood donations, and Orange Grove ISD took home the first-ever 'WOW' Award for collecting the most, at 920 units.
Rebekah Van Blarcum, a senior at Orange Grove high school who was also awarded the Charles Gubitosi 'Outstanding High School Hero' award for her division, credited Mrs. Sharon Bartosch for all the school's successful blood drives.
"This award would not be possible without Mrs. Bartosch, she took me in when I got inducted into NHS and really gave me a place to be and she gave me the motivation to help the community and just to be a better person through this," said Van Blarcum.
"A lot of it starts with the motivation to have every member of the senior class to have a red cord. That has been Mrs. Bartosch's goal, and we've done that now three years in a row."
She also says the high school's location is great because when they do host drives, they're always easily able to take in walk-ins.
"We tell them, 'of course!' We always wanna increase our numbers, but we wanna increase the amount of lives we save!"
The top four schools from each division that generated the highest amount of blood donations collected were recognized for their hard work:
DIVISION 1A:
1st place: Tuloso-Midway Academic Career Center
2nd place: Benavides Secondary
3rd place: Pettus
Honorable Mention: Annapolis Christian Academy
DIVISION 2A:
1st place: Port Aransas
2nd place: Freer
3rd place: Woodsboro
Honorable Mention: Ben Bolt
DIVISION 3A:
1st place: Mathis
2nd place: George West
3rd place: London
Honorable Mention: Falfurrias
DIVISION 4A:
1st place: Orange Grove
2nd place: Sinton
3rd place: Alice
Honorable Mention: Rockport-Fulton
DIVISION 5A:
1st place: Gregory-Portland
2nd place: Veterans Memorial
3rd place: Mary Carroll HS
Honorable Mention: Flour Bluff
AWARDS:
Charles Gubitosi Outstanding High School Hero honorees: Johnathan Alaniz (Benavides), Mireya Sanchez (Ben Bolt-Palito Blanco), Aliza Cisneros (San Diego), Rebekah Van Blarcum (Orange Grove), and Malaeya Campbell (Flour Bluff)
Top Recruiter: Jadon Sanchez of Ingleside
Top Donor: Paul Lee of Flour Bluff
Laptop winners: Wyatt Migura, Cristina Sanchez or Ridge Neri
Rising Star: School of Science & Technology
First-ever WOW award: Orange Grove High School
High School Nurse of the Year: Ms. Anne Cantu of Freer
Chairperson of the Year: Mrs. Rebecca Carr of Mathis
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