By Jonathan DeBerry

With unemployment rates rising nationally and locally, many Tennessee residents are facing a tough but important question: How can I make enough money to get by until my next steady job?

Filing unemployment is always an option, but for many people, the stipend awarded by the unemployment office just isn’t enough. This leaves two popular options for quick cash: working at a call center or donating plasma.

For those born without a needle phobia, the former option is a no-brainer, as veteran donors can be in and out in under two hours and walk away with as much as $35 a visit, a good hourly wage at any job.

Bonnie McAllister has been donating plasma for over 20 years. When she’s not working as a psychic advisor in Boones Creek, McAllister makes regular visits to a plasma center in Johnson City.

“I’ve been coming the past couple years frequently, twice a week; I just consider it as part of my job,” McAllister said.

McAllister is one of the lucky donors. She chooses to donate plasma to supplement her income rather than create one.

“This is extra. It’s wiggle room; it’s cushion.”

Not everyone, however, is lucky enough to come to the plasma clinic merely for cushion. Many plasma donors are driven simply by economic desperation and necessity.

Rachael Errett was sitting in the waiting room of the plasma center waiting her turn just like everyone else. To the passerby, she would appear to be just another college student looking to make some extra cash, but Errett, in addition to being a student at Northeast State, is a full-time donor processor at Plasma Biological Services in Johnson City. With her husband recently laid off from his carpentry job, Errett is taking full advantage of her employer's economic opportunity, playing the part of donor and employee.

“My husband got laid off.” Errett said. “Now I’m in here trying to get some money for gas because of that.”

Errett and her husband are not the only ones in the Johnson City area affected by unemployment. The unemployment rate has steadily risen in Washington County from a relative low of 4.3 percent in November of 2007. Since that time it has crept upwards to 6.1 percent in November 2008, according to Economagic.com.

The increase in unemployment has not gone unnoticed at local plasma centers.

Gary Orvis, center director for Advanced Biological Services in Johnson City, admits that his clinic sometimes sees a slight increase in business before Christmas, but the number of people coming through his doors in late November seemed unusually high.

“There’s definitely been an increase [in client volume],” Orvis said.

“The economy’s still rough. Food prices have stayed high; gas prices have come down, but it’s getting worse.”

Chrissy Boruff, donor floor supervisor at Advanced Biological Services, has noticed an increase in client volume as well.

“We’ve had record-breaking weeks the past four weeks in a row,” Boruff said in a late-November interview.

“Previously to a couple weeks ago we were doing 1,100 a week, and then we hit 1,200. Now we’re not doing anything under 1,300.”

Just down the street at Plasma Biological Services, the same story holds true. Three days out of a six days week, a licensed physician spends four to five hours at the center overseeing the screening, donation and other various processes at the clinic. The remaining three days are overseen by Leigh Ann Rippetoe, physician substitute at Plasma Biological Services.

“I wouldn’t say we’ve doubled our numbers,” Rippetoe said, “but we’ve probably added at least 30 to 40 donors a day.

“A lot of our donors work, but the influx of new donors are saying they’re here because they’ve been laid off.”

Rippetoe and her fellow clinic employees have even had trouble accommodating the increase in client volume.

“There are times when we’re having to wait for another donor to get off the bed before we can send another donor back,” Rippetoe said.

Most plasma centers offer between $25 to $35 a visit and promise a monthly income supplement of more than $800, a figure equivalent to working a part-time job.

Once the initial three- to four-hour physical has been performed for a donor’s first visit, veteran donors can daydream about their cash stipend from the reclined plasma donation chair, where donors are allowed to read, listen to music or even send text messages from their cell phones.

For recently unemployed individuals or individuals feeling the economic strain, earning fast cash doesn’t get much easier. 

Adam Smith moved to Johnson City from Columbus, Ohio only to find that the wages paid in East Tennessee were not quite what he required to provide for his family. Smith turned to plasma donation as an alternative method of income.

“I made a lot more money in Ohio than I do down here,” Smith said.

“I got children too, and what I’m making doesn’t really cut it a lot of the time.”

Smith, like the vast majority of donors, is not fazed by needles or hanging bags of orange-tinted plasma.

“A lot of people are afraid of needles,” Smith said, “but it’s really not that bad.”

With Plasma Biological Services claiming an all-time high of 4,000 donors in October, up from an average of 2,500, it seems that the number of cash-hungry donors may continue to rise.

Regardless of East Tennessee’s economic condition, the plasma centers will be there waiting to receive any healthy adult man or woman weighing at least 110 pounds.

Although the large-gauge needle and hour-long fist-pumping can be drawbacks to some, the combined lure of easy cash and the knowledge that plasma is helping to create medicines for pregnant women, ER patients and burn victims will likely continue to make plasma donation a popular avenue for income supplementation when times get tough.

The Facts on Plasma Donation

• 55% of your blood is plasma
• Plasma is used to make medicines for hemophiliacs, newborn babies and HIV patients
• The process of plasma extraction is known as “plasmapheresis”
• Specific medicines made from plasma include tetanus shots, rabies vaccines, coagulation concentrate factors and enzyme products
• Most plasma centers screen diligently to exclude drug users, sometimes even checking for track marks beneath a donor’s tongue.
• Donors are generally allowed to donate up to twice a week
• There is currently only a one month surplus of plasma available to patients in need
• At least one year of surplus is desired
• Some pregnant women are unable to donate plasma due to unique proteins in their blood
• Roughly one half of plasma donors in Johnson City are college students