#InThisTogether: 01 JUN 2020

With everything going on during the COVID-19 crisis, we wanted to share some of the stories about what Cook people are doing during this difficult time. All around the Cook world, we are #InThisTogether, and we would love to hear stories about how you and your coworkers are stepping up to make a difference. If you have a story to share, please email us at BlogEditor@CookMedical.com.

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Paying it forward

By Jon Hancuff, manager, global Editorial Content for Corporate Marketing and Communications

For nine days in March, Ashley Southern would have to sneak into her house after work through the basement, she would immediately shower, and then hide in her bedroom so her four children, including twins under the age of two, wouldn’t know she was there.

Ashley, who is the nurse manager at a nursing home in North Carolina, was self-isolating until coronavirus tests on a couple of the facility’s residents came back. While she was downstairs preparing to spend the night separated from her family, her mother-in-law, Sherry Southern, would be upstairs distracting the kids.

“Ashley was in the house and the kids didn’t know it,” said Sherry, who works in Calibration at Cook Winston-Salem (CWS). “She was really stressed. She had several evenings of sitting in her room crying.”

In addition to being unable to spend time with her family, Ashley was also stressed about the situation at her job, where the national shortage of personal protection equipment (PPE), particularly face masks, was starting to be felt.

Family at risk

Sherry’s job is one that can’t be done remotely, so she still is onsite every day, as is one of her best friends at CWS, Carolyn Hamilton, who works in the engineering testing lab, where she gets paid to, in her words, “break stuff.”

“Sherry was pretty emotional when she told me what Ashley was going through,” Carolyn said. “Her daughter-in-law was at risk, which could put her grandkids at risk.”

Carolyn, who started sewing quilts with her grandmother when she was five, immediately thought of a way she could help her friend’s family. She didn’t give Sherry the details, but that night she went home and watched a couple of YouTube videos on how to make face masks.

Turns out Carolyn already had on hand all of the material needed to start making them—bolts of 100 percent cotton cloth, spools of quarter-inch elastic strips, and iron-on interfacing (an inner layer of fabric that makes them more protective).

“Anytime I see material on sale, I stock up,” she said. “If you’re a seamstress, that’s just what you do.”

In true “testing lab” fashion, Carolyn first made a prototype mask—but it fell short of her standards and promptly ended up in the trash. After a bit of tweaking, she produced 10 masks that she was happy with. She took them to Sherry, who promptly violated social distancing guidelines for a brief second.

“I hugged Carolyn’s neck and told her ‘thank you,’” she said. “I told her, ‘I don’t know how to repay you for this.’”

After getting Ashley’s feedback on the initial batch, Carolyn made some alterations to her design, and then set about making enough for the entire nursing crew to get through several weeks without having to reuse one. She has a good process in place, first prepping a batch of materials and then switching to the sewing—which takes about 10 minutes per mask.

Carolyn has refused all payment for the masks, which she has started making for anyone who requests them (including a custom one for an engineer to accommodate his full beard). When people do donate money, it immediately goes toward more mask-making supplies.

Part of that is who she is. Another part of it is that Carolyn feels she has a debt to repay to her coworkers.

In September 2011, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The folks at CWS sprang into action, holding yard sales and other fundraisers to help cover Carolyn’s expenses while she went through treatment.

“This is my chance to pay it forward a little bit,” Carolyn said. “I just want to give back to those who helped me.”

Sherry would argue, though, that even without a feeling of indebtedness, Carolyn would still be stepping up.

“She just does it out of the goodness of her heart,” she said. “Carolyn helps even when it’s not a time of crisis. She helps all the time. That’s just Carolyn’s nature.”

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