452 donations and counting: Naperville blood donor’s dedication has kept him giving for 27 years

Thirty-seven-and-a-half days.

That, collectively, is how long Orin Albrecht has spent in blood donation centers since 1996. And he isn’t stopping anytime soon.

Last month, Albrecht, 55, celebrated his 452nd blood donation at Naperville’s Vitalant donation center. The visit took his total time spent donating over the past 27 years to 900 hours.

For Albrecht, though, it was just another Saturday.

“It’s part of my life,” he said Tuesday. “I just make it a part of my life.”

Albrecht, a Dixon native who now lives in Aurora, started donating blood in college. At first, he recalled, he was “scared to death.”

It was a friend who initially asked Albrecht to try donating. He was staying in the dorms at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb when a buddy challenged him to take part in an on campus blood drive. Up until then, Albrecht had never given blood before. He hesitated.

“I didn’t want anyone sticking a needle in me … but then I sat there thinking to myself — honestly — aside from a pint of blood, what do I have to lose? So I went down, donated and the rest is history,” he said.

Albrecht is both a whole blood and platelet donor.

According to the American Red Cross, whole blood is the most flexible type of donation. It can be transfused as is, or can be separated into its different components — red cells, plasma and platelets — to help multiple people. Whole blood is frequently given to trauma patients and people undergoing surgery.

Platelets are tiny cells in your blood that form clots and stop bleeding. Cancer treatments and organ transplant procedures especially rely on platelet transfusions.

Every two seconds, someone in the United States needs blood or platelets, the American Red Cross says. Platelets in particular only have a shelf life of five days, heightening the need for new and current donors to keep up with demand.

Whole blood donors can donate every eight weeks, up to six times a year. Platelet donations are allowed more frequently: every seven days, up to 24 times a year.

Albrecht said his annual is to max out the number of donations he’s allowed every 12 months.

Asked what encouraged him to not just continue but accelerate his donating, Albrecht said, “It’s nothing more than giving back to the community that’s spurring me on to keep doing this.

“It doesn’t cost me any money, it only costs me my time. And it’s a huge value to somebody who’s fighting for their life. … It’s one thing to donate some money to a charity, but to me it means a lot more to me to give platelets or blood and help somebody survive who might not otherwise have that ability.”

For Vitalant and other area blood donation centers, longtime donors like Albrecht are indispensable, Vitalant spokeswoman Ann Sterling said.

“It’s pretty remarkable that you’d have individuals like … Orin that feel committed and want to donate as often as they do,” she said.

Vitalant is one of the largest nonprofit blood and biotherapies health care organizations in the U.S. It has a network of about 115 donation centers across the country and hosts approximately 60,000 blood drives annually.

There are 15 donation centers in Illinois alone. Naperville’s is located at 2764 Aurora Ave.

In 2023, Vitalant Naperville provided 3,381 red cell products and 1,029 platelet products to partner hospitals, Sterling said. Nationwide, all the hospitals Vitalant’s 115 donation centers serve needed 1,173,414 red cell products and 312,852 platelet products last year.

“It’s amazing,” Sterling said, “that there’s this kind of commitment. … It speaks volumes to the amount of people that we have in our (communities) that care for others.”

Albrecht said he’ll be back soon.

“I’m going to keep doing this,” he said, “until I physically can’t do it anymore.”

tkenny@chicagotribune.com