Mask making, distribution a community effort
CHERYL SCHWEIZER | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 5 years, 11 months AGO
Owners of The UPS Store in Moses Lake, Lisa and Amador Castro (second and third from left), and employees Ciarra Garza (left) and Alyssia Garza (right) get a load of homemade masks ready for shipment.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Masks made by Moses Lake volunteers.
Courtesy photo
Masks made by volunteers in Moses Lake are not only used locally, they’re shipped around the country.
Courtesy photo
Senior Reporter Cheryl Schweizer is a journalist with more than 30 years of experience serving small communities in the Pacific Northwest. She began her post-high-school education at Treasure Valley Community College and enerned her journalism degree at Oregon State University. After working for multiple publications, she has settled down at the Columbia Basin Herald and has been a staple of the newsroom for more than a decade. Schweizer’s dedication to her communities and profession has earned her the nickname “The Baroness of Bylines.” She covers a variety of beats including health, business and various municipalities. | April 14, 2020 11:07 PM
MOSES LAKE — Lisa Castro wanted to make sure everyone knows the homemade mask project she’s part of is a community effort.
The masks are being made in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, as a way to protect people working in health care and, well, anyone who needs a mask. Castro and her husband, Amador, are owners of The UPS Store in Moses Lake, and they are not charging to ship homemade masks. That prompted The UPS Store’s parent company to get in touch with reporters.
The Castros and their employees have shipped a bunch of masks.
“We think we’re at about 250,” Castro said Friday afternoon. Yet, as far as Lisa Castro is concerned, that’s not the important part. “The key is, it’s community involvement. It takes effort from a whole bunch of people.”
Castro is part of a group of Moses Lake residents volunteering their skills. Masks made in Moses Lake have been shipped by the Castros as far as New York and Virginia.
“I cannot sew, but I can give back a different way,” Lisa Castro said.
The story of the mask project was told in the March 25 Columbia Basin Herald.
“Sue Tebow really is the one that started this,” Castro said.
Tebow put out a request for people to sew masks. Castro knew Tebow but didn’t know many of the other volunteers.
They may have been acquaintances before, but they’re friends now.
“I would say, yes, new friendships have been developed,” Castro said, and existing friendships have been strengthened.
Cobie’s Fine Drycleaning has provided cleaning services, and supplies have come from Country Fabrics in Moses Lake, The Fabric Patch in Ephrata and Blue Ribbon Linen in Moses Lake, Tebow said. The Home Center in Moses Lake also has donated to the project.
With the mask-making still in full swing, Castro is working on another project: providing snacks to workers at local medical facilities, and to local law enforcement and fire departments, if there are enough donations. Only commercial, prepackaged foods can be accepted, nothing homemade, she said. People who want to participate can drop off donations at The UPS Store, 601 S. Pioneer Way, Suite F. It’s open from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].
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