(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — It’s been more than three years since Naperville’s Kim Benedyk Sandford died from a rare form of cancer, which she was diagnosed with in 2012. Since her passing, Benedyk Sandford’s family and friends have set out to make a difference through blood drives held in her memory.
“Strangers gave us one last weekend with Kim, gave her that one final time to make cookies with the boys,” said Kristyn Benedyk, Kim’s sister.
Through transfusions, an estimated 50 pints of blood, maybe more, provided Kim the strength to spend some evenings at home with her husband and, importantly, her two young sons while she was in the later stages of treatment for cancer.
“If people could see those photos … that’s what you’re giving somebody when you donate blood,” said Kristyn. “You gave my sister one last weekend.”
Kim died in the spring of 2020. Her family firmly believes that she lived so long directly because of the transfusions. Kim believed the same, and in the years after her diagnosis they learned that cancer patients draw the greatest demand on the nation’s blood supply, with chemo treatment causing anemia in patients.
It was that experience that led them to start A Pint for Kim.
“It started with Kim’s sense of humor,” said Kristyn. “She told one of the doctors, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to pay you back.’ That joke was the beginning of the blood drive.”
Kim was supposed to be at the first blood drive. Instead, she died five days before. From hospice, she requested that her wake double as a blood drive. At the time, a critical blood shortage was looming, one that wouldn’t come until 2021. When the shortage arrived, the state’s supply was down to less than one day.
“That means if there was a big snowstorm and nobody could get out to donate for a day, hospitals would run out,” Kristyn said.
That first blood drive is where things started to take a different turn.
“Over 500 people came out to the very first one,” she said. “We instantly were like, ‘OK, we have a movement here. We have to keep doing this.’”
Partnering with Versiti for the blood drive, Kim had still been alive as the online reservations for the blood donations began to stack up.
“We were able to tell Kim, ‘It’s at 50, it’s at 100, it’s at 200,’ and so she was able to experience that part of it and to see what was happening,” Kristyn said.
Cut to Mothers Day weekend 2021, when the second annual A Pint For Kim Blood Drive took place in a suburban airplane hangar — a location chosen in part because organizers could fit 100 beds six feet apart from one another under compliance with the state’s COVID-era restrictions.
Despite the restrictions, the 2021 A Pint For Kim drive would smash the Illinois record for pints collected at a single day, single location blood drive. They collected more than 500 pints and also began showcasing how drive organizers could break blood donation stigma with some creativity.
“People get nervous or scared, so we’ve tried to create this really fun atmosphere: A car show, we have food trucks, we have live bands, we have inflatable bouncy houses,” Kristyn said. “It’s a party. It is truly a party because we’re saving thousands of lives, so there’s no better reason to have a party than that. We’re really trying to change the way that people see blood drives.”
In the spring of 2023, the fourth annual A Pint for Kim broke previous records at Naperville North High School, where Kim’s two sons attend. Too young to donate blood, her sons instead donated their time and support along with hundreds of high school students who worked the event.
“They instantly were like, ‘This is your new home,’” Kristyn said. “This is where it will be. It’s the day before Mother’s Day every year, so that’s our big one.”
Kristyn said A Pint for Kim will not only be expanding into other states throughout the Midwest, but they’d like to try for the national blood drive record.
“It’s currently held by the Chargers, the NFL team,” she said. “It’s 2,450 pints, so it’s an ambitious goal, but I think in a couple years we can really rally all of Naperville, all of Chicago … we want to get the Cubs, the Sox, Bulls and the Hawks and just be like, ‘Chicago needs to take this record home from California.’ That’s on our sights, too.”
While the blood drive has been one way to honor her sister, Kristyn told WBBM that after Kim’s death, she started receiving texts and phone calls from folks who wanted to share how Kim helped each of them in other significant ways.
“She never told me any of this stuff that she was quietly doing to just take care of the community,” she said.
What would Kim say about the ripple effect created by her life? Kristyn can provide a clue based on Kim’s own words, which Kristyn read from a final text from 2020.
“That’s incredibly amazing, what you guys have been able to accomplish in such a short amount of time,” she said. “So proud of you. Those were her words: ‘So proud of you’ … to her sons, to her husband, to her sister, her friends: ‘So proud of you.’”
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