For Emergency Mask Makers Group, It's Mission Accomplished

Timothy Gorbold, a product innovation developer at RuffWear in Bend, told the Source in March that he wanted to help with the PPE shortage—so he went onto the page of the Facebook group, Pandemic Partners Bend, where he connected with Laura Wang, a former ER nurse turned stay-at-home mom whose husband is a medical device distributor, and Elisa Rebecca Melton, who works in product management, and whose husband is the manager of the surgical unit in Bandon, Oregon. The group then formed COEMM, working to make masks, set up drop sites for supplies and finished masks, coordinate the efforts around the 3-D printing of face shields, and eventually, working with St. Charles—where, at its Bend location, providers are treating the region's COVID-19 patients.

"Our group was outstanding in its ability to fill requests," Elisa Rebecca Melton told the Source Friday. "Sometimes I would go to collect at the end of the day and the giant totes at the drop sites were overflowing with zip lock bags full of masks. It was just an overwhelming effort by all the seamstresses."

And while the efforts have resulted in tens of thousands of masks being made locally, with requests filled from Warm Springs to La Pine to Prineville, Melton said now that St. Charles has a stockpile, she and the other organizers felt they could pause.

"Getting the masks to the nurses and staff at St. Charles was the first main mission. Once we finally got the hospital administrators on board and and their staff covered, we shifted focus to other agencies," Melton wrote in a Facebook message to the Source. "It began to overwhelm me, as I was the person making all these collections, delivering to facilities to have them cleaned, packaging them individually, and then delivering them. I personally began to feel vulnerable and exposed and not really prioritizing my own safety. So we switched gears, and after discussing it with our little group of admins, we decided to take ourselves out of the equation and have people donate directly to the organization that was requesting masks. It worked, but people were still breaking quarantine and we want people to follow guidelines for safety."


On April 13, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began recommending that people wear masks in public to help slow the spread of novel coronavirus. Today, many local as well as national companies are crafting masks that people can buy—so while many average people are still in need of masks to go about everyday tasks such as grocery shopping, the group organizers say they know those people can get what they need.

"The other major factor that prompted us to put our group on pause is that everyone wants a mask—every individual, every business, every office," Melton said. "Although their need is real and important, our group was designed to bridge a gap for health care workers and agencies that we rely on to have a safe and protected community. Also, in the past two weeks companies have developed online sales for cloth face covers that allow business and corporate companies to purchase masks for their employees (as they should). We didn’t want to turn our grassroots effort into a free for all, it would have been too much for our group. We want COEMM to stay intact so we can be ready when the next big change happens."



As of Friday, COEMM drop sites will be closed, but the group reminds people they can drop off masks at these locations for distribution to the wider community:


And for those looking for patterns, here's a video shared by Quiltsmart in La Pine on the COEMM page this week: