Volunteers have healthcare workers covered in Manatee and Sarasota counties

Magnolia Ridge’s Hope Carey, president of the Manatee County Aging Network, a nonprofit geared toward serving seniors in Manatee and Sarasota counties, is tired.

She’s tired of talking about masks. She’s tired of dedicating hours to coordinating the making and delivery of thousands of masks.

But she continues because she knows with every mask produced by members of the Manatee Sarasota Personal Protective Equipment Mask Facebook group, a life could be saved.

“About a week ago, I hit a wall,” Carey said. “I was so tired. I wasn’t sleeping because I would be thinking about masks.”

But she realized the COVID-19 threat still is causing deaths, especially at assisted living facilities.

“What happens if we stop?” she said.

The group has been working with 175 volunteers to make masks to distribute to hospitals, assisted living facilities, police and fire departments and others.

MCAN started the Manatee Sarasota PPE Mask Facebook group and has partnered with local nonprofits, businesses and community members to try to fill a need.

“We’ve been working this like a job,” Carey said. “We didn’t realize it was going to require more of us than our normal jobs do.”

When the COVID-19 outbreak hit in March, MCAN members reached out to community members and hospitals about what they needed. The resounding answer was masks.

“A lot of us didn’t have a sewing machine nor had any of us ever made a mask or knew what type of mask needed to be made,” Carey said. “So we decided we were going to do something, … having no idea what we were getting into.”

The mask project began March 30, and since then, the group has made more than 31,000 masks distributed to 180 assisted living facilities, Manatee Memorial Hospital, Sarasota Memorial Hospital, Lakewood Ranch Medical Center and first responders.

Besides monetary and supply donations from volunteers, the group has also received donations from Goodwill, Bayside Community Church and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Parrish resident Toni Muirhead, a volunteer for MCAN, pulled out her old sewing machine to help with the mask effort.

“A lot of us had old machines and had to remember how to use them,” Muirhead said. “It’s a relearning process for us. I’m not working, so it fills my days doing something useful.”

Participants of the project had to do constant research to keep up to date with what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and hospitals were saying were the appropriate materials, patterns and ways to make masks.

“We have discovered through this process that it takes a lot of time, but it’s rewarding,” said Christina Soderberg, volunteer coordinator for Lakewood Ranch Medical Center.

She said working on the masks has brought people together and given people an opportunity to meet others.

“When you look at the whole picture, we’re all strangers,” said the Inlets’ Beth Stager, an independent partner of Electronic Caregiver, which is a national health technology company. “We had no connection with any of these people before all this started. Now it’s almost like we’re a family working for the same goal.”