The bloodmobile parked outside of Sociable Cider Werks on August 27. (Davis Steen)
At first, Memorial Blood Centers’ (MBC) August 27 blood drive at Sociable Cider Werks, 1500 Fillmore Street NE, was a perfectly normal charity event: a space for Northeast Minneapolis residents to show up, give blood and grab a pint.
But things quickly took a turn for the worse when, at 8:27 a.m., a shooter opened fire during a school-wide Mass at Annunciation Catholic School, 509 54th Street West, killing two children and injuring 21 others before dying by suicide.
Suddenly, what started as a routine community event turned into something more immediate and concrete: a way to help injured children and grieving families less than ten miles away.
“It’s a good thing there’s a lot of people coming,” said Sharmake Mohamed, an MBC driver and registration host at the event who helped all manner of residents sign up to give blood in a light-blue van situated in the parking lot.
“The community’s here, which is amazing. It’s an honor to be here — the tragedy that happened this morning, it’s awful, man. I feel so bad for the people involved.”
Mohamed understands the need to chip in. He started working with Memorial Blood Centers after discovering his mother got hospitalized for an undisclosed blood condition. “I could be somewhere else, but it’s a way to give back, in a way.”
Katie Smithberg, a first-time donor, spoke with the Northeaster ahead of donating. She had previously tried to donate blood but was rejected. After the morning’s events, she looked up blood drives and headed over. “Apart from policy change and politics,” she said, “This is the biggest way you can help your community after a tragedy like this morning.”
Sharmake Mohamed drives the vehicle, signs people up and answers questions about giving blood. (Davis Steen)
Taylor Giorocco, Sociable Cider Werks’ taproom operations manager, said Memorial Blood Centers was “trying to get as many people in as humanly possible. From what I understand with how blood banks are constituted in the (Twin) Cities, it’s all hands on deck. It goes where it needs to go.”
On August 20 — one week prior to this event — MBC said Minnesota’s blood supply dropped below a two-day inventory. Typically, hospitals and patients need a seven-day supply. They asked for donations of all blood types but emphasized the need for types O-negative and O-positive.
Kathy Geist, Vice President at Memorial Blood Centers, said they “urgently need the community’s help to rebuild the blood supply and prevent this situation from becoming more dire.”
Amanda Berg, bartender at Sociable Cider Werks, said she “definitely” noticed an uptick in activity following the Annunciation shooting, an observation echoed by Geist and Mohamed. “It sounds like their appointments are full, but they’re doing walk-ins. There’s just a bit of a wait.” (As of 4 p.m. that day, the wait to give blood was in excess of an hour.)
Dave Dvorak and Dax Flyger, two Northeast residents, spoke highly of the event. Flyger said Sociable Cider Werks is “really generous: they’ll float you a pint if you do something good for other people. It’s cool that a lot of cideries and breweries do this sort of thing in Northeast.”
“My buddy and I do this regularly,” Dvorak said. “We schedule for here at the same time, hang out, give blood and grab a drink. It seemed especially poignant and appropriate that we were here today — the staff on the bus were saying a lot of people walked in today. There’s some really big problems in the world, and it feels good to be able to do something.”