Strangers come together and speed PPE to a COVID hospital

Here’s a dose of hope for the first episode of SEASON-19, our dive into the cost of COVID.

People quote Mr. Rogers a lot these days, about what to do in a crisis: Find the helpers. This is a story about people deciding to become the helpers, finding each other.

And it tells us: Maybe WE can help. Maybe the helpers are us. This story shows us how that can start to happen.

The three folks in the photo below are meeting for the first time (via Zoom, of course). By this point, they’d already raised thousands of dollars and marshalled other resources, to get PPE for a COVID hospital in Brooklyn.

They look very pleased to have found each other.

(Also, YES: The person in the upper left is our reporter pal Sally Herships, who interviewed Dan for the Season 3 “reporter’s notebook” episode. In the last week-and-change, she has become, as she puts it, “an unlikely mask distributor.”)

She and her new collaborators are definitely still at it. Here’s the link to the GoFundMe to help them get PPE to that COVID hospital in Brooklyn.