Platelet donor Ralph Douglass, left, is helped by collection specialist Scott Geislinger as he finishes up a donation Jan. 13 in St. Paul, Minn. He has been a blood donor since high school.

MINNEAPOLIS — Settled into a king-size recliner, warm beneath a thick blanket, watching "Julie and Julia" on the monitor before him, Ralph Douglass hardly looks as if he's saving the life of a premature baby. Yet Douglass has particular proteins in his blood that are especially useful in helping preemies survive, and so he comes to a blood donation site every two weeks to donate platelets.

Before the week is out, his platelets will go into a tiny baby — or a person getting chemo, a teenager with leukemia, a burn victim, or someone who's bleeding to death. And all he had to do was listen to Meryl Streep warble, "Bon appetit!"

"It's pretty hard to say no to that," said Douglass, 54, a Minnetonka man who's donated blood since he was in high school. For the past decade, he's donated platelets through a process called apheresis, from a Greek word that means "to take away." In apheresis, blood is withdrawn from a donor. A special machine separates the platelets from the blood, which then is returned to the donor.

Because Douglass essentially walks out with the blood he walked in with, there's not the fatigue sometimes associated with blood donation, "which is a real benefit," he said. As to his blood's special affinity for premature babies, "my wife says it's linked to my maturity level."

We often hear about how blood supplies are down and that donors are needed. Fewer than one in 10 eligible Minnesotans give blood — hardly our best moment, and yet we're the envy of many states with even fewer donors, said Wendy Capetz, director of marketing and development for Memorial Blood Centers. "It's always a case of too little supply and too much demand."

Platelets are the cells in blood that begin the clotting process. Platelets are typed, just like blood. One apheresis donation of platelets can provide as many platelets as in five whole-blood donations.

Patients who receive all or most of their platelet transfusion from a single donor have a better chance of avoiding immune system reaction to the transfusion, Capetz said.

While red blood cells can be stored for 42 days and plasma frozen and stored for up to 12 months, platelets expire after five days. Because many surgeries depend upon transfusions of platelets, a ready supply is critical.

Douglass said he's motivated to help simply by the idea that he can, although lately he's been thinking of a teenager from his church who's fighting leukemia.

"I don't know that he's ever gotten my platelets, but I know they could be going to someone just like him," he said.