Saturn National Donor Day Celebrates ten years of helping to save lives through blood, Marrow, Organ and tissue Donation.

1997, Perry MgGriff recieves America's In 1997, LifeSouth Community Blood Centers produced the first Five Points of Life Ride. Dave Quick from the Saturn/UAW parnership team was in attendance and a strong affiliation was born. Saturn/UAW has been a part of all Five Points of Life Rides. Their involvement rapidly spun off into National Donor Day which has been held at Saturn retail locations nationwide since 1998. LifeSouth Community Blood Centers is a National Partner of this annual February event.

Mark your calendar, on and near Valentine’s Day, February 14th, 2007, Saturn Retailers across America will celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Saturn National Donor Day. The Retailers, independent businesses, will volunteer to host well over 100 community donor drives promoting blood, marrow, organ and tissue donation. LifeSouth Community Blood Centers is one of 16 national partners for the campaign. Since 1998, Saturn and its partnering nonprofit organizations have held over 1,800 community donor drives. While most are in Saturn showrooms, other drives are at community sites such as malls, auto shows and at college campuses including schools with substantial diversity populations such as Howard University and the University of California San Diego.

“We are proud that Saturn National Donor Day has reached its milestone first decade and we could not have done it without the tremendous support of our nonprofit partners,” notes Dave Quick, Team Leader for Saturn National Donor Day. “Thanks to our partners, in 2007 a Saturn retailer somewhere in America will collect our 200,000th unit of blood since we started in 1998. We will also cross well over the 12,000 mark in the number of potential marrow donors added to the National Marrow Donor Program Registry at Saturn events. So far, there have been 24 potentially lifesaving marrow matches from among the donors added to the Registry by Saturn. Once again our national spokesperson, snowboarder and liver transplant recipient Chris Klug, will promote organ and tissue donation as well. Chris won an Olympic medal only 18 months after receiving a new liver and he is living proof that transplantation is main steam medicine that enables recipients to lead productive lives.”

For more information on Saturn national Donor Day, you can visit Saturn’s donor information site at www.saturn.com/donorday. You can visit this link to locate the Saturn national Donor Day event nearest you.