{"id":260308,"date":"2025-11-04T04:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T04:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/260308\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T04:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T04:43:07","slug":"texas-cyclists-ride-from-plainview-to-lubbock-to-raise-lifesaving-donation-awareness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/260308\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas cyclists ride from Plainview to Lubbock to raise lifesaving donation awareness"},"content":{"rendered":"

LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – A group of Texas cyclists rode from Plainview to Lubbock Monday, raising awareness about the urgent need for lifesaving donations.<\/p>\n

The Lone Star Circle of Life Tour is a 12-person cycling team of Texans, all with deeply personal connections to donation. The team promotes donations of blood, marrow, organs, tissue and stem cells during their week-long, 500-mile trek across the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been doing this tour for many many years for the purpose of making Texans aware of the fact that we need donors, all kinds of donors,\u201d Mabry said.<\/p>\n

They also rode in honor of families impacted by donation on the South Plains. After cycling nearly 60 miles, the riders met the people they were pedaling for at UMC.<\/p>\n

Cyclist rides for miracle child<\/p>\n

Melanie Hartman from Happy rode in honor of Ruby Benevedes. The 9-year-old was one of the miracle kids featured in this year\u2019s Children\u2019s Miracle Network Telethon.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was amazing meeting Ruby, she\u2019s so vibrant and full of life. It was amazing to see her spunk in life and her dreams,\u201d Hartman said.<\/p>\n

Ruby is living with the most severe form of sickle cell disease and is waiting for a bone marrow transplant.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s here, healthy, you can tell that she\u2019s ready to do jumping jacks or do whatever she wants to do. But there\u2019s actually a war raging inside of her,\u201d cyclist Tim Dixon, who also rode for Ruby, said.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s encouraging more people to sign up to donate bone marrow<\/a>, so she can live out her dream of becoming a nurse.<\/p>\n

Teacher encourages student donations<\/p>\n

Cyclists can also ride in honor of donor advocates like Whiteface teacher and assistant principal Eliseo Rocha Jr.<\/p>\n

After watching his parents go through several transfusions, he encouraged his students to donate blood at least three times in high school so they can earn their cord for graduation.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know they all wear the National Honor Society, the straight A\u2019s, but I tell them that, it used to be red, now it\u2019s orange and purple for Vitalant<\/a>. I tell them, that\u2019s what I look for. Because nowadays, that shows me that there\u2019s young people that care about more than themselves. They\u2019ve already impacted, by the time they graduate, at least nine lives,\u201d Rocha said.<\/p>\n

One time, the students took it a step further. Rocha made a bet he would get a tattoo if all his students passed and made their three donations. One student couldn\u2019t donate at the last blood drive before graduation, so she traveled to Lubbock on the weekend to make sure Rocha had to get the tattoo.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something that everybody can do. It doesn\u2019t take very long and it\u2019s something that goes a long way to help somebody live another day, another week, months, years,\u201d Rocha said.<\/p>\n

The Lone Star Circle of Life cyclists will continue their tour across Texas, heading to Abilene next.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 KCBD. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – A group of Texas cyclists rode from Plainview to Lubbock Monday, raising awareness about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[34825,38369,417,2768,16953,49,48,11242,7001,18042,7216,119159,635,35024,120679,50492,120677,10400,120673,120671,48719,120681,120676,120674,15642,1188,2177,10534,120672,120678,64976,120682,120675,120680,82,3305,30565,53623,544,267,2851,102824,88960],"class_list":["post-260308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-advocate","tag-awareness","tag-bike","tag-blood","tag-bone","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cell","tag-child","tag-childrens","tag-circle","tag-cycle","tag-cycling","tag-cyclist","tag-debbie-mabry","tag-donation","tag-eliseo-rocha","tag-life","tag-lifesaving","tag-lone","tag-lubbock","tag-marrow","tag-melanie-hartman","tag-miracle","tag-need","tag-network","tag-of","tag-organs","tag-plainview","tag-principal","tag-raise","tag-recipient","tag-ruby-benevedes","tag-sickle","tag-sports","tag-star","tag-tattoo","tag-teacher","tag-texas","tag-tour","tag-transplant","tag-urgent","tag-whiteface"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}