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"Helping others have become my passion"
Name: Lucio Serrano | Profession: taxi driver | Transforming attitude: held more than 400 donations of blood and platelets in the capital hospitals
Between one race and another, the taxi driver Lucio Serrano usually parks his car in specific addresses. In the last four decades, he was responsible for more than 400 donations of blood and platelets in hospitals of the capital. This means 240 liters of fluid. His trajectory in this activity began in 1973, when Serrano fulfilled a military service. "Since then, helping others became my passion," he says. Because he has a high number of platelets in his body (about 400.000, almost 60% more than the average quantity) and a good calibration in veins, condition that facilitates the removal of the material, he happened to be disputed by several health institutions which he keep records. “I once used to donate every week," he affirms. "Today I go about twice a month."
Although the name of the beneficiaries patients never be disclosed, he distrusts that he has helped at least two celebrities. One would have been the psychologist Maria Rita Simões, the wife of the singer Roberto Carlos, who died in 1999, due to a cancer in the pelvic region. She was hospitalized several times at the Albert Einstein Hospital, in Morumbi. "I got a call whenever she was there.” The other person supposedly is the ex-president Lula. "I got a call as soon as he arrived at the Syrian-Lebanese Hospital, in Bela Vista, in July 2013, to treat a lung metastasis”, he says.
Retired accountant, the professional lives in Itapecerica da Serra, in the Greater São Paulo, and has a taxi rank in Capão Redondo, in the South Zone. In at least two occasions, he lived situations with criminals in which he almost needed a transfusion: once when he was attacked with a knife and the other when he was at the point of a gun. The fact that he escaped unscathed of these episodes motivated him to write the book Experiences of a Winner (Publisher Scortecci, 95 pages, 20 reais). Released last month, the book is offered to his clients. A heart of foam usually comes as a gift. At 59, Serrano aims to complete 500 donations until he turns 70, when he will have to stop volunteering because of legislation. After that, his challenge will be to collect documents to prove that he surpassed the score of the american John Sheppard, the Guinness Book recordist with 315 donations throughout life.