Comic-Con’s 50th
Robert A. Heinlein
Blood Drive in 2026
Comic-Con’s Robert A. Heinlein Blood Drive, San Diego Blood Bank’s largest and longest-running blood drive, returns for its 50th year, with donation areas located in Grand Hall A at the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel and at San Diego Blood Bank Donation Centers.
The growth of our blood drive over the years has been phenomenal. The Robert A. Heinlein Blood Drive began at San Diego Comic-Con back in 1977 at the El Cortez Hotel. That first year, 148 pints of blood were collected, and as the convention has grown, so has our blood drive. Our 2025 blood drive collected 15,216 pints of blood!
In our long history, a total of 108,420 pints have been donated by Comic-Con attendees, exhibitors, professionals, volunteers, and staff! San Diego Blood Bank estimates that your donations have impacted more than 300,000 lives over the past 49 years of hosting our blood drive!
Robert A. Heinlein’s 1951 novel, Between Planets, helped popularize the phrase “Pay It Forward.” Please make it a point to pay it forward this year and save people’s lives at our 50th Robert A. Heinlein Blood Drive. Your donation is desperately needed.
There are THREE ways to donate!
1.
You can either make an appointment online at the links below or at the Blood Drive booth in the Sails Pavilion. All donors will receive a free Spider-Man T-shirt from Marvel, Eisner-nominated comics, and/or other prizes (while supplies last). Donors also have a chance to win one of many other special prizes donated to the blood bank by our exhibitors and staff. These special prizes will be on display at the Blood Drive booth.
我们强烈建议在凯悦酒店进行捐赠时提前预约，但他们通常也会接受个人捐赠，即使没有胸牌也可以。
These appointment links are for donating during the convention at the Manchester Grand Hyatt:
地点：
Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel
Grand Hall A, 1st Floor
1 Market Place
San Diego, CA 92101
工作时间
Wednesday through Saturday
9:00 AM through 6:00 PM
Sunday
9:00 AM to 3:30 PM
2.
If you can’t make it to the Hyatt during the convention, you can still make an appointment to donate for 36 days after the convention at any of San Diego Blood Bank’s 10 Donation Centers, or at any mobile blood drive. You do not need a badge. Donors will receive a free Marvel Spider-Man T-shirt (while supplies last). Appointments are required and will be honored first, but walk-ins are welcome. Hours vary.
Donate Monday, July 27 through Monday, August 31
To schedule an appointment at a San Diego Blood Bank location or mobile blood drive in your area,
please call (619) 400-8251 or click HERE
( Link is: https://www.mysdbb.org/donor/schedules/zip )
圣地亚哥血库捐献中心地点：
San Diego County
SAN DIEGO BLOOD BANK GATEWAY DONOR CENTER
3636Gateway CenterAvenue, Suite 100
San Diego, CA 92102
(619) 400-8251
CARMEL VALLEY DONOR CENTER
3880 Valley Center Drive, Suite 210
San Diego, CA 92130
Located behind Marketplace Grill
(619) 400-8251
CLAIREMONT DONOR CENTER
3998 Clairemont Mesa Boulevard,
Suite A
San Diego, CA 92117
Located between Vons and Happy Nails & Spa
(619) 400-8251
COASTAL DONOR CENTER
1910 Via Centre
Vista, CA 92081
(619) 400-8251
CHULA VISTA DONOR CENTER
386 East H St., Suite 210
Chula Vista, CA 91910
Terra Nova Plaza next to D’Lish restaurant
(619) 400-8251
EAST COUNTY DONOR CENTER
776 Arnele Avenue
El Cajon, CA 92020
(619) 400-8251
LIBERTY STATION DONATION LOCATION
2850 Womble Rd. Building 30
Suite 101B
San Diego, CA 92106
Located across from the fountain, between Yoga Six and Ikiru Sushi
(619) 400-8251
NORTH COUNTY DONOR CENTER
358 West El Norte Parkway, Suite J
Escondido, CA 92026
Located near IHOP and Dollar Tree
(619) 400-8251
SABRE SPRINGS DONOR CENTER
12640 Sabre Springs Parkway, Suite 109
San Diego, CA 92128
(619) 400-8251
ORANGE COUNTY
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA BLOOD BANK – IRVINE
7 Corporate Park
Suite 130
Irvine, CA 92606
Located by Coffee Dose
(844) 380-5220
OR, you can make an appointment at any San Diego Blood Bank mobile drive within those 36 days!
3.
YOU CAN DONATE ANYTIME BEFORE THE CONVENTION
Attendees, volunteers, and staff! Donate before the convention and ask for a certificate of donation. Tell them your donation is for Comic-Con, and the group code is: CCON
On-site during the convention, bring your certificate to Comic-Con’s Robert A. Heinlein Blood Drive at the Hyatt, pick up your T-shirt and giveaways, and see if you have won one of the many special prizes donated to the blood bank! Sorry, only one certificate per person will be accepted.
请抽出时间拯救生命！捐赠！
A Brief History of Comic-Con’s
Robert A. Heinlein Blood Drive
对于科幻小说迷来说，很少有人能像罗伯特-A-海因莱因（Robert A. Heinlein）那样大名鼎鼎。从《星舰奇兵》到《异乡怪客》，海因莱因是科幻作家中的佼佼者。遗憾的是，他很少出席大会，因此他的读者很少有机会见到这位大师本人。
Then, in the early 1970s, Heinlein had a life-threatening illness and needed many pints of a rare blood type. He felt he owed his life to the donors, so when asked to be a guest at the 1976 Worldcon in his hometown of Kansas City, he agreed—but with one specific stipulation: that he would only sign autographs for people who donated blood.
Thus, longtime Comic-Con committee member Jackie Estrada approached the author with an offer to hold a blood drive in San Diego if he would consent to be a guest. He agreed, and in 1977 Heinlein came to Comic-Con. He and his wife, Ginny, had a great time, and Heinlein even drew a picture for the Sunday morning Art Auction.”David Scroggy [who went on to be a VP at Dark Horse Comics before he retired] was the first blood drive coordinator,” recalls Estrada. “We also had Theodore Sturgeon there signing his book, Some of Your Blood, which he gave to all of the blood donors. We also had entertainment for the people while they were [donating blood]. I remember that Leslie Cabarga played the piano, and C. C. Beck played the guitar. It was a very fun event, and Robert was delighted. We’ve had the blood drive every year since.”
罗伯特-A-海因莱因简史
Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was one of the most popular and respected science fiction authors of the 20th century. By setting a high standard for science and engineering plausibility, he helped raise the genre’s standards of literary quality. He was the first writer to break into mainstream magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s with unvarnished science fiction. He was also among the first authors of bestselling novel-length science fiction in the modern mass-market era.
Four of Heinlein’s novels (Double Star, Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress) won Hugo Awards in the years they were published. In 2001, another novel (Farmer in the Sky) and a novella (The Man Who Sold the Moon) received “Retro Hugos” for the year 1951, and the movie Destination Moon, which was based on a Heinlein story, received the “Retro Hugo” for Best Dramatic Presentation.
他是第一位被美国科幻小说作家协会授予终身成就大奖的作家。
海因莱因被誉为 "科幻小说家的院长"，但他的意义远不止于此。他是一位慈善家，帮助过许多慈善事业和个人。当被问及如何才能报答他的帮助时，他会回答说："你不能报答我，你必须向前报答。"
One cause that was of great importance to him was blood donation. Having a rare blood type himself (AB+), he was a frequent donor and a supporter of the National Rare Blood Club, which was an integral part of his novel I Will Fear No Evil. In 1976, at the 34th World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City, he helped organize the first of many science fiction convention blood drives. In 1977, he did the same at San Diego Comic-Con.
2026 marks the 50th year of the Robert A. Heinlein Blood Drive as an integral part of Comic-Con, and the 18th year of the WonderCon Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Blood Drive.
圣地亚哥血库简史
1950 年，圣地亚哥血库在圣地亚哥县医学会的支持下成立。创始人托马斯-奥康奈尔博士（Dr. Thomas O'Connell）和弗雷德里克-霍兰德博士（Dr. Frederick G. Hollander）的远见卓识和奉献精神成就了今天的圣地亚哥血库，一个以向社区提供卓越服务而著称的组织。
From 1950 to 1953, annual donations averaged 27,000 pints in San Diego County. In the 1960s, San Diego Blood Bank’s growth continued and so did donations, nearly 40,000 pints were given annually by 1969. In the late 1960s, we were also at the forefront of medical technology when we were one of the first blood banks in California to institute hepatitis screening on all donated blood.
20 世纪 70 年代迎来了一个巨大发展的时代。我们具有里程碑意义的希尔克雷斯特（Hillcrest）总部于 1972 年开业，我们的第一个卫星机构--北郡捐赠中心于 1978 年在埃斯孔迪多开业。
In 1981 we were among the first blood banks in the nation to formalize a designated donor program, which allows patients to select their donors. Our autologous donor program also was put into place more than 30 years ago for patients who wish to pre-deposit their blood for a planned surgery.
By 1986, donations reached 86,000 pints annually and have exceeded 100,000 for many years now.
One thing that has not changed since the very beginning is the remarkable commitment and selfless spirit of our most vital resource—blood donors. Our entire donor population is solely volunteer and has been since 1974. Some of today’s donors are as young as 17 and nearly half are women.
San Diego Blood Bank is licensed by the State of California Department of Health Services and by the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It is a fully accredited member of the Association for the Advancement of Blood & Biotherapies (AABB) and a member of the California Blood Bank Society (CBBS), America’s Blood Centers (ABC), Blood Centers of America (BCA), the Blood Centers of California (BCC), and is the local Cord Blood Registry for the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP).