Bloodworks 101 Bloodworks Northwest

April 16th, 2007 will be remembered as one of the deadliest shootings in American history, leaving 33 people dead on the Virginia Tech campus, including the shooter. It's a day West Seattle's Whitney Moore would like to forget but now feels compelled to honor. Whitney was a student that day when the "sirens were deafening" on the Virginia Tech campus. She shares her story with producer John Yeager on this special edition of Bloodworks 101. 

When Bloodworks’ chief financial officer Bob Gleason retires in June, he will leave an already-cemented legacy as a values-driven finance maestro.  Bob has set a high bar, and Bloodworks looked far and wide for a business leader who could match his standards and finesse. And now, Bloodworks is excited to welcome Jeff Perry  into the CFO role. Bloodworks 101's Helen Pitlick sat down with Jeff to get to know him a little better and learn more about what he has planned for Bloodworks. 

Former Seattle Mariners catcher Dan Wilson played 12 years for the M's, making the playoffs in 1995, 1997, 2000 and 2001 before retiring in 2005. In 2012, Wilson was inducted into the Seattle Mariners Hall of Fame alongside his battery-mate, pitcher Randy Johnson. But as noteworthy as Wilson's career on the field was, it's his work helping Northwest charities over the years that has a lasting impact on his community.  Bloodworks 101 producer John Yeager caught up with Dan recently at a Pop-Up Blood Drive hosted by the Mariners at T-Mobile Park for this special ENCORE EDITION of Bloodworks 101.

Sometimes it's easy for many people to underestimate a little thing like rolling up your sleeve and donating a unit of blood. But Seattle's Paul Patu is not one of them.  That's because, as Bloodworks 101 producer John Yeager found out, Patu owes his life to that "little thing." And wait til you hear what the impact of that one man's life turned out to be. 

Dom Carreiro works in Bloodworks' Transfusion Service Lab at Overlake Hospital. Dom and his team are a direct link between our inventory of typed, tested blood and the patients who need it – or at least, their medical care teams. And sometimes things don't go according to plan.

It's rare that a blood donor and a recipient get to connect but that's exactly what happens on this special ENCORE episode of Bloodworks 101 when frequent platelet donor Dan Ertel meets Mack Bell, a 30-year-old African-American man living with cerebral palsy, who contracted a potentially-deadly blood condition called aplastic anemia. That's a deficiency of all types of blood cells caused by failure of bone marrow development.
Mack, as you'll discover,  was the recipient of several transfusions that played a big role in the effort to save his life. So, here's what happens when someone with a lot to be grateful for gets to thank someone who wasn't expecting it.
But there's more. Wait til you hear what's happened since this story first ran in January of 2022.