(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- There will be a very special blood drive in Naperville on Sunday. It’s being held instead of a wake for a Naperville woman who died this week.
Kim Sandford, a 49-year old wife and mother of two, passed away Tuesday after a battle with cancer. The Sunday blood drive in her honor is called “A Pint for Kim.”
"Kim was never one who liked a lot of attention on herself,” one of Sandford’s sisters, Kristyn Jo Benedyk, said. “A lot of people didn’t even realize that she had been fighting cancer for eight years, so, she wanted to use what she had been through and her experiences to generate some kind of good in the world."
Benedyk and her sister, Kathleen Fuglsang, hope to inspire donations of 100,000 pints of blood this year because so many cancer patients need donated blood.
"A lot of people would be angry in a situation like this,” Benedyk said. “She was, absolutely, never angry and always wanted to find a purpose and to create some kind of goodness out of her suffering."
Benedyk says her sister, Kim, was supposed to be at this weekend's blood drive but didn't live to see it. Instead, she says, "It will be an opportunity for people to give back and save lives and be a celebration of the selflessness with which she chose to live her life."
A pint for Kim will be Sunday at Iron Gate Motor Condos in Naperville. So many people have signed up that another blood drive is being held Friday morning at 555 S. Eola Road in Aurora, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Local businesses have donated $30,000 worth of merchandise items that will be raffled off Sunday, free, to people who donate blood.