Kentucky Red Cross Honors Rickey Porter as Clara Barton Award Recipient

Since 2013, Rickey Porter has been a “Serving Leader” in the Red Cross Kentucky Region and the Western Kentucky Chapter. Rickey maintains incredible empathy, patience and poise while taking the steps to ensure that the Red Cross is prepared to serve our community. 

He has mentored new and seasoned volunteers alike, and has paved the way for others to provide high levels of service to those in their moments of greatest need. For these reasons, we are proud to announce him as a recipient of this year’s regional Clara Barton Award. The Clara Barton Award recognizes service in volunteer leadership positions held over a period of years.

In the nine years Rickey has been with the Red Cross, he has continued to take on additional responsibilities to ensure that volunteers and the region have what they need to grow and be successful. He has deployed to disasters at home and across the country more than 20 times because he believes in providing for those who have been affected. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rickey has deployed 8 times and logged more than 1,060 hours helping locally. He also responds to an average of 200 home fire cases a year and treats each one as they are the most important one.

Rickey is also a member of our Integrated Care and Condolence Team. In this role, he supports not only the Western Kentucky Chapter but the South Central Kentucky Chapter as well, often leading to interactions with hospital social workers, medical professionals and local coroners. He has been essential in the growth of community partnerships within Western Kentucky with various churches and has provided preparedness and safety education to the community. He is a hands-only CPR instructor and a First Aid/CPR instructor and maintains his certifications just so he can teach life-saving skills to our volunteers. He also provides First Aid stations on behalf of the Red Cross when requested for events such as the Owensboro Air Show and the Senior Games in Hopkinsville.

Rickey’s calm, competent leadership has been essential to the success of the Red Cross mission and objectives here in the Kentucky Region and his expertise is invaluable to our mission delivery. As a region, we are grateful for the support of such an outstanding volunteer!

Kentucky Red Cross Honors Missy Hall as Volunteer of the Year

Every day, the Red Cross relies on volunteers to achieve its mission, and day-in and day-out, Melissa “Missy” Hall goes above and beyond to make sure that mission is fulfilled.

Missy (second from right) receiving
the Volunteer of the Year award

Missy, who joined the Red Cross in 2019, volunteers not just as a Disaster Action Team (DAT) volunteer, but also as a mentor and leader for other volunteers. She is always quick to answer the call to service and has served a number of roles to support the Bluegrass Area Chapter. 

In the past year, Missy has logged more than 470 volunteer hours, responded to more than 45 home fires and served on 3 disaster deployments. She has never wavered in her willingness to respond to the call of action, and for these reasons we are proud to announce her as a recipient of this year’s regional Volunteer of the Year award.

Missy showed exemplary support to the Red Cross mission when she was deployed to the flood response in central and eastern Kentucky this spring. She initially assisted the response by conducting damage assessments in impacted communities, and was then asked, despite having no logistics or supply training, to continue her deployment as the Supply and Procurement Manager. Missy quickly took the required training and coordinated with the outgoing manager to get on-the-job training before successfully taking on the role. She also agreed to continue assisting the response until it ended – for a total deployment of one month.

In addition, after spending a 12-hour day doing damage assessment for this response, Missy received a call on her way home one evening regarding a multi-family fire. Without hesitation, Missy drove to the fire scene to assist the impacted residents.

Missy consistently puts the mission of the Red Cross at the forefront. She truly displays a superior commitment and responsibility towards mission and the needs of the people we assist. Missy is an amazing Red Crosser with a true servant’s heart and we are proud to support her nomination!

Blood Donor Highlight: Malisa and Stephen

Stephen and Malisa have been making Power Red donations together every four months since they got married. Malisa began donating blood after she married Stephen, while Stephen began donating in high school.

"We come [donate] together,” said Malisa. “It’s our date day.”

Power Red donations are similar to whole blood donations, except a special machine is used to allow donors to safely donate two units of red blood cells during one donation while returning their plasma and platelets.

Stephen’s blood type is O+. When asked why he donates, he replied “The need is there. I’ve had parents, grandparents in hospitals. The need is high.”

Malisa has type B- blood—a rarer blood type—and donates because she wants to help others.

“It’s quick and easy to do something small,” Malisa said. “I don’t consider it big, but someone else will.”

As of September ‘21, Stephen has donated 64 units of blood, and Malisa has donated 18 units since she started using the Red Cross Blood Donor app to track her donations.

The Red Cross national blood inventory is the lowest it’s been at this time of year since 2015. There’s an immediate need for blood donations, especially type O, as well as platelets to help overcome an emergency shortage. If you’re feeling well, please roll up a sleeve and donate. Sign up at rcblood.org/donate.