Friday, April 4, 2003 | 9:09 a.m.
When friends teased Judith Sligar for being Las Vegas' most beloved vampire, she would laugh and accept it as a compliment.
In her 18 years at United Blood Services in three states, she oversaw donor recruitment that resulted in the collection of 822,000 pints of blood -- 102,750 gallons -- enough to fill nine backyard swimming pools.
Her career as spokeswoman and administrator of the organization included quelling the fear of donating blood in the wake of both HIV/AIDS and mad cow disease, coordinating major blood drives in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and overcoming the potentially deadly hepatitis C virus that she contracted while performing cross-typing demonstrations at seminars.
Judith Noah Sligar, who retired in July, died Saturday of complications following heart surgery at St. Mary's Hospital in Reno. She was 63.
Services for the Las Vegas resident of 14 years, who moved to Reno after retiring, were last week in Reno. No Las Vegas services are scheduled.
"My mother lived a life of selflessness," daughter Michelle Camacho of Reno said. "She taught her children to give because when you give you get paid back tenfold."
The family announced Thursday that the Judith Sligar Memorial Blood Drive will be conducted in communities statewide each year on March 29.
"I had the best job there is," Sligar said in an interview with the Sun last year. "Each day I went home knowing that my community was a better place because I helped to make it possible to give someone else a chance for life. I also worked with the best caliber of people, and I got paid to do it."
From 1985 to 2002 Sligar worked at United Blood Services offices in Las Vegas and Reno as well as El Paso, Texas, and Scottsdale, Ariz., She served as executive director in Las Vegas from 1988 to 2000 before spending her last two years on the job as assistant director.
Born Judith Noah in San Francisco on April 23, 1939, to William Noah and the former Geraldine Tepner, she was raised in Reno, where she met her future husband, Richard Sligar. They were married for 45 years and raised four children.
Sligar, who had a bachelor of science degree in business administration from California Coast University, gave up a career in real estate in Ely to begin her work for United Blood Services. Her dedication was so strong that even affliction from hepatitis C could not stop her.
"I never once considered quitting, and fortunately I had strong family support," Sligar told the Sun last year. "I decided early on that I would continue working and show you can live a productive life with hepatitis C."
During the initial HIV/AIDS scare of the 1980s, Sligar was at the forefront of informing the public that new testing kits and needles were used for each blood donation, quelling some fears.
"We became (AIDS) experts overnight, especially those of us who had to answer questions from the news media," she said last year. Sligar took a similar leadership role in educating the public when so-called mad cow disease -- Cueutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans -- came to light.
Under Sligar's leadership and coordination of blood drives, United Blood Services went from collecting 34,800 pints of blood in 1988 to 71,438 pints in 2001.
Sligar's lone regret was that despite her work -- and the efforts of many others -- the percentage of donors has dipped from a one-time high of 5 percent of the eligible population to just 2 percent.
"If everyone who was eligible to donate blood donated, each person would have to give just one pint every five years and there would never be a local shortage again," she said.
In addition to her husband, daughter and mother, Sligar is survived by two other daughters, Connie Niesen and Lee Ann Slate; a son, Jeffrey Sligar; a brother, William Noah II; 10 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Arrangements were handled by Walton's Funeral Home in Reno.
The family says donations can be made in Sligar's memory to the Grace Community Church in Reno.
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