SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — 2025 is only a few days old, but Community Blood Bank has already wrapped up its most important blood drive of the year.
Heroes Behind The Badges is a friendly competition between the Sioux Falls Police Department and Fire Rescue that’s been helping local hospitals save lives for nearly three decades.
Community Blood Bank is a joint effort between Avera and Sanford, and provides blood products to more than 40 area hospitals. The organization requires 550 units per week to meet the need, and when it comes to donations it doesn’t get any bigger than the Heroes Behind The Badges blood drive.
The event got its start in December 1996, with members of the police department and fire rescue giving blood to combat a shortage. The general public was also encouraged to donate and vote, with 217 pints collected.
“Doesn’t have to be a member of the fire department or police department, anybody that comes in we’d like to get people come in and then they can donate in the name of one of the departments, one of their favorite departments, which we know is the fire department,” a member of the fire department said in December 1996.
The fire department won the first showdown, while the police department claimed last year’s contest, which featured a record 1,308 donations.
“Without this event, we’d be in serious trouble,” Community Blood Bank Executive Director Ken Versteeg said.
“Over that 29 year period, over 21,000 units of blood and over 60,000 lives have been saved just because of that start, that first start between the police and fire department,” Versteeg said.
It’s become the organization’s most important event. While many schools and businesses are unable to host during the holidays, Versteeg says Heroes has helped uncover a long list of new partners.
“It’s grown from one week over to two weeks and several buses and three donor rooms, and so now we’ve just really hit a peak, I should say, in the Heroes Behind The Badges event,” Versteeg said.
Each department will also make a donation to the charity of their choice, with Fire Rescue competing for Children’s Home Society and the Police Department giving to Special Olympics of South Dakota.
“The winners receive $2,000 to use to give to the charity of their choice. The not-so-fortunate losers receive $1,500 to give to their charity of choice, so all in all, it’s still a win-win,” Versteeg said.
“It’s such an important thing, everybody wins, granted we like to say we win the competition part of it,” Sioux Falls Fire Rescue Division Chief Steve Fessler said.
Steve Fessler is the division chief with Sioux Falls Fire Rescue and says the donations have extra meaning for every first responder.
“We see those people that are in accidents, we see people that need medical attention different things like that, so year in and year out it’s stuff that we see, we know how important it is and we want to make sure the community knows that,” Fessler said.
“Obviously, as our city grows it impacts our blood supply greatly,” City of Sioux Falls police officer Bridget Devlin said.
Bridget Devlin is a police officer with the City of Sioux Falls.
“I mean obviously this is something we need to keep up on and it isn’t something that we can just replace with other products so we really just need people to get out and it’s a really easy way to make an impact in our community,” Devlin said.
As Heroes Behind The Badges approaches three decades, Versteeg says it’s the donors — and families of donors — who make this an annual event.
“You’ll see a lot of people that will sign up for six spots or eight spots back to back to back and they all come in as this is their holiday gift to the community and it’s a way to give back to our hospitals and our patients and then honor our police and fire departments,” Versteeg said.
And maybe even save a life.
1,218 donations were collected during this year’s event, with Sioux Falls Fire Rescue winning with 641 donations. If you didn’t have an opportunity to donate during “Heroes Behind the Badges”, January is National Blood Donor Month. Click HERE to see the Community Blood Bank’s calendar of events.
