‘It definitely saved our bacon’: Volunteers produce 24,000 masks in a month for front line workers

Gathered in a small parking lot outside a South Hill fabric store, with cups of apple cider in hand, the members of Masks for Spokane Health allowed themselves a chance to celebrate on Friday evening.

They had a lot to celebrate – 24,411 things to celebrate, in fact.

That’s how many face masks the group made for first responders and Spokane community members in the past month.

That effort came to a ceremonial end on Friday. It began with a concern that first responders and health care personnel lacked the number of masks they need to fight COVID-19.

Cathy Doerr, a longtime member of the American Sewing Guild, has led the initiative with Bill Shuler and recruited local fabric shops to support the cause.

Regal Fabric and Gifts, where the Friday celebration took place, was one of the eight shops in the area that provided fabric and materials to make and distribute masks. As of Friday night, the shop had contributed 9,264 to the effort.

For an experienced sewer, making one of these masks takes 10 to 15 minutes each, Doerr said while wearing a bright floral mask.

Her inbox has been filled with notes of gratitude for the work that volunteers have done and offers to contribute.

“The responses that we get, Bill and I both get emails saying, ‘I can’t thank you enough because it’s given me sanity in this time. It gives me something to do. I feel like I’m doing something, trying to help,’ ” Doerr said. “… People are amazed: 24,000 in a month, that’s incredible.”

Thanks to efforts like these, the entire Spokane Fire Department workforce and their families have masks, said Brian Turpen, a fire equipment operator for Station 9.

The firefighters worked with Masks for Spokane Health to help distribute and pick up the masks.

Last month, the Spokane Fire Department had more than 30 firefighters in self-quarantine, but now that number is minimal, Turpen said.

“I believe that’s because we’ve used all the personal protective gear, the PPE, on every call that could possibly relate to COVID-19,” Turpen said in a blue Gonzaga-themed mask. “Our dispatchers go through a list of questions and then they, as front-line firefighters, make us aware of the situation that we’re going into so we wear the correct PPE.”

Christopher Haijsman, a contracting officer at the Fairchild Air Force Base Emergency Operations center, reached out to the American Sewing Guild in hopes of getting masks for the base.

The sewing guild not only sold the base masks at cost but was able to shorten the timeline of when the base would receive the masks. In just more than a week, the sewing guild had sewn over 5,000 masks for Fairchild.

“It definitely saved our bacon,” Haijsman said. “We’re able to continue some of those really important functions on base where we may not be able to keep that 6-foot distance. So we’re wearing the masks to help with that. So that was really awesome that they were willing to partner and to do that.”