Shark attack wasn’t enough to keep man from swimming for a cause

Bob Forgrave has given his blood to a shark, but he’d much rather give it to a human. It’s a passion he shares with his friend Scott Leopold.

Both would like to offer you a challenge.

Forgrave and Leopold know something about making a splash in this world — both literal and figurative.

Leopold is an extroverted jokester with an overwhelming urge to give of himself.

Forgrave is a traveled military veteran who once had a death-defying brush with what he humbly calls a “big fish.” His arm was punctured by a tiger shark during a swim from Egypt to Saudi Arabia.

“I felt, at one point, as if there was something near me. Something hit me from the front and my next stroke stopped around it. And knew I had one arm in it and the other around it. I was able to break away, but I didn’t know what from and so I went underwater and there it was coming in a second time,” Forgrave said.

The 45-second attack felt more like five minutes, but he got away by climbing onto his guide boat. The shark proceeded to stalk them as they headed for shore.

It makes you wonder, why in the world would Forgrave ever jump in the water again? It’s because he and Leopold live to swim and they do it to draw attention to blood donation.

“Inviting the community to make an appointment to donate blood and beat our combined total of blood donations. Right now it’s around 1,300 give or take,” Leopold said.

That’s close to 100 gallons of blood.

This month will mark the 20th anniversary of their “Swim for Life” event, which benefits Bloodworks Northwest. It’s a 1 or 2-and-a-half mile swim in Lake Washington. This year, it’s at Seward Park.

Leopold was the first of the two to donate blood. He started in high school after watching his mother and father give blood.

“It feels good knowing that you’re actually saving a life. There’s a thing that my mom taught me when I was very young. She said ‘to save a life is to save the whole world’ and that’s kind of the way I approach it. I encourage others to donate. It’s healthy for you. There’s no downside to donating blood,” Leopold said.

Fast forward to the 90s, when Leopold and Forgrave became friends while working at Microsoft, and that’s when Forgrave made his first donation.

“After I’d see now important donating was to [Leopold] there was that time when the bloodmobile parked in my parking spot and I thought ‘I can walk around it either way or because they parked in my spot I could just walk through it.’ I walked through it, donated blood on the way and thought ‘well that wasn’t bad’ and they gave me a cookie,'” Forgrave said.

Just to be clear, the swimmers aren’t also donating blood at the “Swim for Life” event. It’s a fundraiser for Bloodworks Northwest.

“People really come in, they line up to donate when there’s a major need for it and I think that any day is a good day to show young people that there’s never a bad time to donate blood it’s always needed,” Leopold said.

You can take it from a man who’s been taste tested by a shark.

“Each one of us is just one bad day away from needing blood and so we can be on the giving end, we can be on the receiving end, this is what connects us and this event is what pulls it all together for Bloodworks [Northwest] and the community of ninety-plus hospitals that use this blood,” Forgrave said.

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