A Gift from the Heart by Laurel Schuman

As a young person it seemed as if only rich people did “charity work”. Since being rich was never a descriptive word for me, I barely thought about being able to be charitable. I found out later that charity work can be done, even if you don’t always have the financial resources to do so. I also always thought that charitable people were selfless. But, I have to disagree with that because I have personally received so much back from being charitable. It just feels so good to help other people and animals. So, I have to say that it means so much to me to help others that I cannot consider it selfless work. My form of charity work began in High School when a favorite teacher of mine had a parent in need of blood for surgery. At 16 years old, I marched to the Red Cross and gave my first pint of blood. 32 years later, I am working on my 12th gallon of blood, donating every 3 months. I am considered CMV negative. This means my blood can be given to newborns so it is important to me to be a regular donor. As I entered college, I became interested in a charity that a sorority on campus was raising money for – Seeing Eye Dogs. As a student, I had no funds, but, I was able to earn money donating plasma at a private business that sprung up in the town where I attended school. I was able to earn $17 a week for two donations of plasma per week. This came to about 27 gallons of plasma and I donated every dime (about $350) to the Seeing Eye Dog Foundation in Ohio. After I moved to California, another friend of mine had a brother in law with AIDS. Since I couldn’t think of any way of helping, I had my bone marrow tested in the event I could be a match for him. I was not a match, but, the testing involved donating platelets. The Red Cross tissue matched me to a leukemia patient in Woodland Hills and I was able to make 25 platelet donations for him before a nerve problem in my arm caused me to have to stop. After losing 72 pounds at Weight Watchers, I became a part time staff member. My supervisor was a Breast Cancer Survivor. I was approached to be a Team Captain for our territory for the Komen Orange County Race for the Cure. www.ockomen.com. I knew nothing about this but went about creating my team and fundraising. I walked in to register my team of 254 people with my $11,000 in donations thinking this was what all the teams did. Not so, we ended up winning second place honors for the amount of money raised. The following year we won first place for the size of the team (458) as well as for the amount of money raised ($15,000). I no longer work for Weight Watchers but do have a team from my full time job at Rockwell Automation. We have a much smaller team of about 13 people, but, we manage to raise $2,600 to $3,000 per year. Each year I raise money by offering to wear the names of loved ones on my t-shirt – even if that person can’t afford to make a donation, I still wear the name(s). Laurel Meets 'Dodger'