Thurston County makers craft protective gear for workers during COVID-19 pandemic

As public health officials mandate people stay home to stay healthy and slow the spread of the new coronavirus, networks of makers are connecting remotely and mobilizing to address the need for protective equipment on the front lines.

For hundreds in Thurston County, what once were hobbies have suddenly become a means to help others, find purpose, and connect with each other in the face of a global pandemic.

Using tech for good

Lacey MakerSpace, a project of Saint Martin’s University, the city of Lacey, and the Thurston Economic Development Council’s Center for Business & Innovation, has two 3D printers running 24/7 to make face shields for front-line medical workers, says director Joseph Anderson. When the community saw that health care workers weren’t getting the protection they need and saw hobbyists across the country stepping up to meet that demand, MakerSpace jumped in.

“We reached out to all the makers we knew and said, ‘Who wants to get involved?’”Anderson said. More than 150 people have answered the call — people with sewing machines who can make masks, people with 3D printers who can make face shields, people with scissors who can pitch in.

“All our classes are shut down, the shop is closed,” Anderson said. “So we could focus efforts solely on responding to this crisis. That’s 100% of our efforts right now.”

Ali Taylor-Cipolla is one of the makers who now 3D-prints headbands for face shields. The finished product is the plastic headband to which elastic and a clear plastic sheet are attached — transparency films from overhead projectors have been the most easily obtainable clear sheets lately, Anderson said.

Medical workers wear the shields to protect their faces from the spatter of bodily fluids. The CDC recommends they consider wearing a cleanable face shield over N95 masks, which can block at least 95 percent of very small particles, to reduce contamination and extend their use when supplies are depleted.

Taylor-Cipolla said she had just finished a web-development program in February and has been interviewing for jobs. In the past, she and her husband, Brandon Cipolla, have used their 3D printer to create a set of replacement wedding bands, Dungeons and Dragons figures, desk organizers — even a wrist brace when she was injured.

Now, she’s not only printing face shield headbands and experimenting with making other needed equipment, she’s working with the other local printers to see what supplies they need and making sure they have the correct pattern.

“This is what I can do with my skill set and my interests that actually still feels like I have a job when I don’t,” she said. “And so, yes, maybe it’s all of us, in concert, running 3D printers in our own homes cranking out. ... It’s having purpose in a time when it feels really, really aimless.”

Demand for their work has been high. Anderson says they currently have requests for more than 450 face shields and more than 500 cloth masks, and that they’ve donated equipment to Providence St. Peter Hospital, Capital Medical Center, Saint Martin’s, and elsewhere.

It’s a heavy lift — made even heavier by the fact that Anderson’s wife was recently diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing treatment. A partnership with Arbutus Folk School in Olympia has allowed him to “back off a bit,” he said.

Stacey Waterman-Hoey founded Arbutus Folk School in Olympia as a way to build resiliency in the community in case of a crisis, she told The Olympian. And now, well, it’s not the spinning and weaving and metalsmithing of Arbutus that are needed, but other skills.

“Here we are, in a crisis, and what we need is 3D printers and people sewing,” she said.

The folk school is temporarily shuttered, and now she’s helping Anderson. Part of her work involves identifying who needs face shields most.

Sheila Smitherman, a neurosurgeon at Providence St. Peter, called the face shields “amazingly ingenious and amazingly simple.” Waterman-Hoey reached out to her last week, she told The Olympian, to ask if she or her colleagues could use the shields.

As a neurosurgeon, Smitherman likely won’t be the first person to see a COVID-19 patient, but she talked to her colleagues who will — emergency-room staff, respiratory therapists, and others. Due to a shortage of masks such as N95s, providers at St. Peter are now asked to use one mask all day unless it’s soiled, Smitherman said, when they would typically use one mask per patient.

These shields of rounded, transparent plastic “keep the outside world’s droplets from getting on that mask” and increase its lifespan, she explained. The shields can be sanitized.

Smitherman has been serving as a liaison between the front-line workers and shield design team, who have been tweaking the shields — adding padding, rounding corners — based on feedback on comfort and utility.

“It’s been really neat to see this incredible effort and turnaround,” Smitherman said.

Waterman-Hoey said she’s also reaching out to elected officials and local health departments to sort through needs in the community.

“We’re trying to systematize the local community production of these masks,” Waterman-Hoey said. “Then connecting local community mask production with the highest and best use in the community, whatever that is.”

Soon, Anderson says MakerSpace will focus on its 3D-printed face shields, its “expertise,” and hand off the coordination of most of its volunteers’ mask-sewing efforts to another homegrown group: South Salish Mighty Masks.

Dusting off the sewing machine

A few months ago, Faith Addicott was coordinating the county’s Point-in-Time count. Now, she’s coordinating seven teams across seven regions in the county — from Steamboat Island to Tumwater to Centralia — who are sewing cloth masks for local organizations and businesses that request them.

Addicott is keenly aware of the challenges the homeless community faces in taking even the simplest measures recommended to slow the spread of COVID-19, such as washing hands regularly. She says she noticed more and more people — people who work with those communities and otherwise — requesting face coverings.

“We were just really aware that there’s a whole cadre of people who are out there every day, keeping our community running who are never going to be in line for federal allocation of PPE,” Addicott said. The acronym PPE stands for Personal Protective Equipment and includes items such as gloves, gowns, and masks.

She also saw a lot of people starting to sew masks — and a need to organize those efforts and connect them to the need.

The cloth masks help prevent people’s saliva and breath from reaching others, Addicott wrote in an email to The Olympian. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the general public wear cloth face coverings in public settings where social-distancing measures are difficult to maintain, such as grocery stores, due to evidence that asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic people can transmit the virus to others.

They’re not a substitute for the N95 masks health workers wear. But some workers are wearing the cloth masks over N95s, Addicott wrote, to extend the life of their N95s.

Addicott’s contract with the county ended in late March, and she submitted her final paper for her master’s degree the following day, she told The Olympian. The day after that, she created the South Salish Mighty Masks Facebook page to fill that need.

Three days later, there were 200 members. As of Wednesday, that had doubled. The group has raised about $1,700 in donations through a GoFundMe to buy supplies such as needles, thread, and fabric.

Most of the people who make up the seven sewing teams typically sew for fun and are dusting off their grandparents’ sewing machines, Addicott says.

“It’s really quite beautiful to watch, from the organizational level, just how giving people are,” Addicott said. “We’ve got people who this is all they’re doing now.”

Addicott and others, including Jacob Dinklage of the downtown Olympia coffee shop Burial Grounds, organize supplies at the coffee shop, which is closed to customers due to the pandemic.

Plenty of individuals in the community are sewing masks, but by having this organized group, Addicott says it allows people to stay at home more easily and connect with one another for support. She says each donation is celebrated by the group.

“It’s totally awesome,” Addicott said. “We live in an astounding community with just a stellar capacity for compassion.”

As of Wednesday, the group had requests for 2,000 masks. It had already given masks to Olympia Food Co-op, Interfaith Works, Domino’s delivery drivers, Capital Medical Center, Lucky Lunchbox, and more. Pending requests include the Salvation Army, Western State Hospital, and Senior Services of South Sound.

How to get involved

Mandi McKay, an Olympia-based former physician who’s also married to a physician — their social circle includes a lot of medical workers — has been working with people like the makers and coordinators and reaching out to local clinics to connect “people with the resources to people without the resources.”

She named a seemingly endless list of specific people and businesses from throughout the community — including Kelly and Chris Levesque at Capital City Honda, who she said donated two 3D printers to make face shields; Sean and Kat James, who she said donated nearly 200 N95 masks and are making face shields; Deschutes Upholstery owner Mike Witecki, who she said provided material to make hundreds of shields; and Mike and Bree Warjone, who she said also sourced and made shields for Providence St. Peter. These people and many others, she says, are helping to meet a crucial need.

“They’re 100% filling the gap in the lack of medical supply to protect the front line, to keep them safe and healthy and serving the community,” McKay said. “...If they weren’t doing it, the medical providers would be going without. There’s no doubt about that.”

Lacey MakerSpace and Arbutus Folk School launched a web page this week that serves as a repository of information: request forms if an organization needs personal protective equipment, a volunteer sign-up, a link to donate funds for materials and tools, and instructions for how to donate materials.

That web page can be found here: https://laceymakerspace.org/covid-19-updates/thurston-ppe-response/.

The South Salish Mighty Mask GoFundMe can be found here: http://gf.me/u/xurhxn.

Neurosurgeon Smitherman also had a broad message for the community — makers and non-makers — in a time when so much is unknown, weighing heavily on people and creating what she called an “intangible angst.”

“I think any gesture, no matter how small it seems — a gesture of generosity, empathy — toward anyone in our community ... it goes so far. I hope that everybody in the community feels that each individual person can contribute. It makes our community healthier and well faster if there’s just this overwhelming positivity and leaning in toward helping each other.”

This story was originally published April 10, 2020 at 8:12 AM.