Coronavirus Latest: Delaware Valley Residents Stepping Up By Creating Masks For First Responders, Health Care Workers
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Another group helping during the coronavirus crisis are the mask makers. One woman in South Jersey turned her basement into a sewing factory to lend a hand while her hair salon is closed, and a South Philadelphia couple is now making face shields.
Wanda Mora's basement, a place to relax and unwind just a month ago, is now a full-fledged mask-making factory.
From fabric to final product, Mora started sewing in her Cherry Hill home in early March.
"My mother taught me as a child how to sew. But I have to tell you, my machine had a lot of dust on it," Mora said.
Mora began making masks after her hair salon was forced to close by the state.
"The most I've sewn has been 65 in one day," she said.
Mora is now well past 500, shipping the cotton masks everywhere, from hospitals in New York to firefighters in Camden.
"It has a pocket for disposable filters and it has three layers of fabric," she said.
Mora has donated hundreds of masks and charged just cost for others. The money is used to buy fabric and to pay two seamstresses who have been recently laid off and are working remotely.
"Because of social distancing, I leave them in the front and then they drop it off," Mora said.
Just across the river in Northeast Philadelphia, Tom Radziak and Deanne Millo also fired up a homemade factory of sorts.
"We started researching and Googling, and we found different types of instructions and created our own," Millo said.
The couple is making plastic face shields from office supplies.
"It doesn't move, it's not flimsy. It protects the side of your face as well," Radziak said."It's at 125 right now and we've got another 145 in the making."
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It started when Millo's mother, a nurse practitioner in North Jersey, told her daughter her hospital was in short supply.
"We just test run, see what would happen, try a few and see where we go from there. I think we've nailed it down," Radziak said.
Now requests are coming in daily.
And like Mora, Millo and Radziak plan to continue creating personal protective equipment as long as it's needed.
"If I could do anything to stop one little aspect of corona getting on them, it makes me feel good," Millo said.
"I just feel like it's saving lives in a way and it makes me feel really proud," Mora said.
