Now the American Red Cross has another way of collecting blood donations throughout the Greater Rochester area.
The bloodmobile will begin pulling up and parking in area shopping malls or business office parks.
"Our whole thing is to make the ability to donate blood easy and accessible thing for people to do,” says the CEO of the Red Cross' Western New York - Finger Lakes Region, Nancy Blaschak. “This mobile will allow us to save literally thousands of lives."
The Polisseni Foundation donated $250,000 to the Red Cross. One of the Polisseni children, Greg, proposed giving the organization money for a mobile center after receiving an emergency blood transfusion in 2012. Polisseni calls the financial gift a "no brainer."
"Purchasing a bus like that is amazing. There are so much senseless lives being lost out there that if this can help in anyway that's all that matters."
The five-bed traveling donor center gives the Red Cross the capacity to collect 30 or more units of blood a day. And potentially adding more than 750 units of life saving blood a year for patients in the Rochester community.
Officials dedicated the bloodmobile during a ribbon cutting ceremony at the American Red Cross Blood Services Headquarters in West Henrietta.