Thirty Days of VIP Parking

By Gina Chiri-Osmond • June 18, 2018

Share this:

Being elected “Donor of the Month” doesn’t just mean seeing your name in “lights” via a profile like this. For some employees, the honor also comes with a sweet parking space in celebrity-like proximity to your work location. For Sharon Preuss, Education Manager at Mayo Medical Laboratories in Rochester and winner of the title this past February, a space at the entrance of her building, the Superior Drive Support Center (SDSC), helped stave off Old Man Winter.

“I normally don’t mind walking from the parking lot to my building,” says Preuss. “But during the month of February, which is usually the coldest month of the year, it was really great to have a space that close.”

In Loving Memory
Preuss has been donating periodically to the Mayo Clinic Blood Donor Center in Rochester for almost two decades, since she was a young woman. It started after her mother (while in her early 40s) was diagnosed with cancer. Then, later, the disease also struck her stepfather.

“During that time, I saw how blood donation positively affected their energy levels,” says Preuss. “My mother would go from being tired and uninterested to full of spirit and somewhat back to her normal self. We knew it was only temporary, but it was a nice reprieve from the trials of metastatic cancer.”

Giving blood in honor of her parents is also a way for Preuss to “give back to our patients at Mayo Clinic,” she says. And it’s always ultra-convenient for her to donate through the Blood Donor Center’s mobile blood drive. For example, Preuss had to walk no further than the south cafeteria of SDSC, where a mobile donor area was set up at one end.

“You have the option of making a reservation or donating as a walk-in,” says Preuss. “It usually takes about thirty minutes, and the staff members are always terrific and very accommodating.”

How to Donate
For more information about donating blood in Olmsted County in Rochester, Minnesota, call (507) 284-4475 or email donateblood@mayo.edu. For more information about the Mayo Clinic Blood Donor Center, visit the Blood Donor Center blog, the Blood Donor Center website, and/or like the center on Facebook.

Gina Chiri-Osmond

Gina Chiri-Osmond is a Marketing Channel Manager at Mayo Clinic Laboratories.