Tim Graham of Clairemont has an intimate understanding of the need for donated blood. It saved his life.
Years ago he was in a serious motorcycle accident in which he lost a large amount of blood. And there wasn’t enough donated blood to keep him alive.
“My sister, who hates needles, had to donate because when your brother needs help, you step in,” said Graham, 57.
Saturday was his turn to donate.
Wearing a San Diego Padres hat, he ate a slice of pizza and drank water after he donated at the renamed Chargers Blood Drive.
It’s now called “San Diego Cares: It’s in Our Blood.”
Graham attended the Mission Valley event because it’s “just a good community thing to do,” he said. “Basically, I’m giving blood to save someone – maybe me someday.”
He also was drawn by former professional athletes and other entertainment at the Town & Country hotel convention center. Signing autographs in the afternoon were former Bolts Kellen Winslow and Ed White and ex-Padres Greg Vaughn, Chris Gomez, Steve Finley and Wally Joyner.
Others set for morning sessions were ex-Chargers Kris Dielman and Rolf Benirschke and Padres pitching icon Randy Jones.
The event was sponsored in part by the San Diego County Honda Dealers, Darryl and Kathy Issa and the Issa Family Foundation, and the Shiley Foundation. The Honda Dealers gave away a Honda CR-V — won by Terri Baxter of San Diego.
Sitting at the same table as Graham was Point Loma’s Ronnie Silva, 62, who said, “Giving blood has always been a San Diego thing to do. San Diego is a very giving community.”
When Silva heard that the Chargers were definitely leaving San Diego, “the first thing I thought about was the blood drive.”
Silva says he has been donating regularly since the late 1980s.
When the Chargers announced their move to Los Angeles, alarms went off among organizers of the annual drive — the bank’s biggest of the year.
That same day, says Blood Bank CEO David Wellis, Padres senior vice president Tom Seidler called and said “let’s go.”
Wellis said it was Seidler — brother of Padres co-owner Peter Seidler — “who said the last couple years: If the Chargers move, we’ll step up.”
Ex-Chargers kicker Benirschke and Padres executive chairman Ron Fowler also began discussions as well, he said.
“And so all of a sudden, it instantly jelled,” Wellis said. “Look, this isn’t going away. We’re going to continue it. It’s about blood. It’s about saving lives. It’s about the supply being low over the holidays, so we have to keep this going as a San Diego community event.”
He says they went into “marketing mode.”
“What do we call this? What do we do? And we decided: OK, let’s keep a sports theme, but let’s just be inclusive — let’s bring everybody in, give it a different name.,” Wellis said as a band called The Responders played in a ballroom.
“Let’s pull out the best elements of the Chargers drive, but then let’s reconfigure a few things,” he said. “It gives us a chance to kind of redo a few things.”
Among the innovations were Comic-Con style panel discussions — great moments of the Gulls hockey and Sockers soccer franchises, memories from the Padres 1998 World Series team (moderated by Ted Leitner) and a look back at the 1982 Chargers overtime playoff win over the Miami Dolphins.
The change from the traditional Tuesday before Thanksgiving to a mid-December Saturday averted the issue of blood “expiring” before the new year, Wellis said.
The holidays are a “double whammy” as far as blood supply goes, Wellis said. “The demand goes up a little bit and the supply goes down,” thanks to elective surgeries for people taking breaks and more accidents with people out shopping.
Wellis, who says the bank annually collects about 105,000 pints of red cells and 30,000 pints of platelets, had a target of a 1,000 pints Saturday. (It collected more than 700, organizers said.)
“It doesn’t sound like very much,” he said. “But again, because blood expires, we’re always in need of blood.”
Those who missed the Town & County event can donate at one of six donor centers or 10 bloodmobiles (attending 2,000 drives a year), with info at sandiegobloodbank.org.
“Events like this [are] great for the community,” Wellis said. “We’re all contributing, we’re all saving lives together.”
The event’s predecessor, the Chargers Blood Drive, started in 1979 when Benirschke developed ulcerative colitis and underwent two surgeries to remove his large intestine, which required about 80 pints of blood.
Team executives called the San Diego Blood Bank and asked if they could collect donations, and the next day, about 1,000 fans showed up at the stadium and donated nearly 300 pints of blood.
More than 73,000 pints have been collected over the years.
— City News Service contributed to this report.
