SBC Stories

Imagine being 23- and 24-year-old parents when you find out your new baby girl needs a liver transplant to save her life. That was the reality for Liz Lopez and her husband Rudy Heredia. It all started just two months after their daughter Penelope was born. Liz took “Penny” in for a routine checkup where...

If you ever met Megan Mehta, you’d be struck almost instantly by her energy, her vivacity. Megan was born with a lust for life and has spent the past five years reclaiming that energy after having spent ages 8 to 13 in a state she can “best describe as the color gray.” Thanks to the…

Childhood: Sister Hearts Carolina Tejada was born in Cali, Colombia in 1978. She spent a happy, healthy childhood alongside her older brother, Juan Guillermo, and her twin sister, Catalina. At age 11, however, Juan Guillermo, who was three years older than his sisters, began experiencing cardiac symptoms that were later diagnosed as idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy,…

Imagine being 23- and 24-year-old parents when you find out your new baby girl needs a liver transplant to save her life. That was the reality for Liz Lopez and her husband Rudy Heredia. It all started just two months after their daughter Penelope was born. Liz took “Penny” in for a routine checkup where...

If you ever met Megan Mehta, you’d be struck almost instantly by her energy, her vivacity. Megan was born with a lust for life and has spent the past five years reclaiming that energy after having spent ages 8 to 13 in a state she can “best describe as the color gray.” Thanks to the…

Childhood: Sister Hearts Carolina Tejada was born in Cali, Colombia in 1978. She spent a happy, healthy childhood alongside her older brother, Juan Guillermo, and her twin sister, Catalina. At age 11, however, Juan Guillermo, who was three years older than his sisters, began experiencing cardiac symptoms that were later diagnosed as idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy,…

Currently, more than 100,000 people are waiting for an organ transplant and, every 10 minutes, another person is added to the transplant waitlist.[1] On a daily basis, SBC supports organ donation through our HLA lab, which performs tests to detect things like donor-recipient compatibility and early transplant success/failure; and, with the help of our donors,...

Growing up, Lily Shih said she never really gave blood donation any thoughts. “I’m Chinese and it just wasn’t a big part of our culture,” she said. It wasn’t until adulthood when her mom was diagnosed with a rare neurological disease and needed transfusions of her own that Lily understood the importance of transfusion. From…

Brad Hart is a fifth-generation medical professional and comes from a history of medical innovation. His great, great grandfather, Andrew Jackson Hart, was an OBGYN; his great grandfather, Arch Coombs Hart, was a practicing dentist, and one of the first  to lecture that tooth decay was caused by bacteria; his grandfather, Frank L. Hart, was…

In honor of International Women's Day, we interviewed just a few of the incredible women in leadership who make our work possible here at SBC. See what they had to say about their experience as women in their field below. Who has empowered/inspired you to be the leader you are today? Alison Hopkins “My mom...

To help paint a clearer picture of how the challenges of 2020 affected teams all around the Blood Center, we asked team members to tell us, in a few sentences, what being an SBC team member in 2020 meant to them.  “Last year was my 21st year working in SBC’s Processing Laboratory, which performs tests…

August 22, 1950 – May 18, 2020 It is with deep sadness that we inform our donor community of the passing of one of our charge nurses, Susan Belanger, on May 18, 2020. For nearly 20 years, Susan, Sue B., Belanger was an integral part of the SBC collections team. She left an indelible impression…

In honor of National Best Friends Day this year, we interviewed two of our most dedicated SBC volunteers: Dan Rhoads and John Henry. Though their backgrounds are in some ways quite opposite (“yin and yang,” as they say), the two met and have formed a strong bond, largely through their joint commitment to blood donation…

When Rachel Ren* was a junior, she was thrilled at the opportunity to give blood at her high school’s SBC mobile drive. Rachel had never had an experience with blood donation before — never had a family member need blood that she could remember, never needed blood herself — but she felt called to help….

It’s time for your winter Volunteer Spotlight! Stanford Blood Center (SBC) is incredibly thankful for our volunteers, who play a very important role in our health care community. It is our pleasure to introduce one of our wonderful helpers, Jennifer Harris.   Why do you volunteer at SBC? I believe in the importance of volunteering…