Unsung Heroes: The Masketeers save the day. ‘Together, we got this’
It had been weeks and Nadia Niazi was still trying to process how quickly it all had come together. How an idea and a gnawing sense that she could do something to help during this public health crisis turned into a 60-person team of medical mask makers scattered across three counties.
Together, the team became Masketeers Sacramento & Beyond, a far-flung group of sewers, assemblers and drivers who in a little more than six weeks from late March to the first days of May made and delivered more than 2,500 masks to supply-strapped health care professionals, essential workers, schools and seniors. In El Dorado County, Folsom, Roseville, Rocklin, Lincoln and Sacramento, this do-it-yourself team with the superheroes’ name went to work.
“A person on the team came up with that — Masketeers,” Niazi said. “We all said, ‘Exactly! That’s who we are.”
They even had a catchphrase: “Together, we got this.”
A Roseville entrepreneur and founder and president of FITRAH, a nonprofit that advocates for young people transitioning out of foster care, it’s in Niazi’s nature to want to help. Still, Niazi said, she’s been moved by the response from the legion of volunteers and those now wearing the product of their labors.
“It’s really opened my eyes. They’re praising us as much as we’re feeling privileged for the opportunity,” Niazi said in a recent interview. “It’s given us a sense of purpose. We’re feeling their support for us. Everyone feels thankful for the opportunity.”
Brenda Strauch of Lincoln sewed masks with two other groups and for neighbors before joining the Masketeers on a friend’s recommendation to Niazi.
“It felt so good. It was empowering to see the community come together like this. It was awesome to see we weren’t going to just twiddle our thumbs and worry,” Strauch said, recalling the all-in spirit of these thrown-together mask makers.
“Whoever felt called to step up — if they couldn’t sew, they said, ‘I can cut (fabric),’ or ‘I can drive, whatever you need me to do,’” Strauch said. “People who have never seen me in person — I’ve still never seen them. We were a team and didn’t even know each other.’”
“When we first started (in March), they were desperate,” Niazi said of local health workers. “We served the desperation. There were urgent needs at the time.”
The Masketeers met them all: sending masks to a team from Sutter Roseville; shipments to Kaiser Roseville and Sierra Nevada Medical Center; oncology patients at Mercy Cancer Center and Sacramento City Unified School District’s food program; yet more to field nurses and grocery store employees; a domestic violence center and the at-risk elderly.
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The Masketeers are wrapping up their effort, fulfilling final deliveries this week and packing up their sewing machines now that more stock is available online.
The idea for the Masketeers began to take shape in late March. The coronavirus contagion forced a statewide lockdown and health workers scrambled for face coverings.
“My birthday was a few days prior to that. A lot of us had been thinking about our mortality,” Niazi said. If Niazi had lost her life to the virus, she thought, “What have I accomplished?”
She reached out to friends on social media, launching a GoFundMe account and posting to a public Masketeers Facebook page. Friends rummaged through their closets for material. Still others volunteered to drive. A Roseville business, Vacuum & Sewing World, provided elastic. Capital Sheet Metal sent metal nose pieces and other hardware.
“One had a sewing machine. She couldn’t sew — she’d inherited it — so she drove down from El Dorado Hills to Roseville” to drop it off, Niazi said. “People were bringing out their stashes of fabric … We just started coordinating everything. A person had a house and we had a mini-operation all of the sudden. There were 60 of us at one point. Every week more people were coming forward to sew.”
Strauch, too, was exceeding the call.
Her sewing machine gave out and she tore ligaments in her right hand during her time with her first two sewing groups, but kept working and devised a way to sew a certain type of mask one-handed while son Brock, 11, and daughters Bree, 18, and 21-year-old Sierra, cut and sorted fabric. Even with the injury, Strauch knew she could continue to help.
“When Nadia hit me up,” Strauch said, “I said, ‘I’ve got this one mask down.’”
The gratitude would soon be plain to see on the faces of medical workers, patients and others wearing the Masketeers’ handiwork in photos posted to the group’s Facebook page.
“Doctors, nurses, people in the community — they were wearing our masks. That was the coolest thing to see. It was the greatest feeling, just to get them out there,” said Norma Gomez of Rocklin.
Gomez, too, was looking for a way to help and found Niazi and the Masketeers’ Facebook page. Niazi quickly added her to the growing group.
“She said, ‘We need masks,’ and we were like, ‘Here we are. What can we do?’” Gomez said.
Gomez, her sister-in-law and her nephew went to work. Her sewing machine and the reinforcement from El Dorado shared space on the kitchen table as they sewed well into the evening.
“I was willing to help and do anything she wanted me to do. Every week (I would sew) 25, 30 masks and drop them off on the doorstep. It was challenging. I would go until 9 p.m. I’d stay up and make as many as I could,” Gomez said. “But, I would do it, no matter what. I’d still do it.”
Gomez’s final shipment left her house Wednesday morning last week — a dozen, no, make that 15, please. She sewed the final three while waiting for the delivery driver.
“I said, no matter what, I’m going to make them,” she said. “These people need them.”
“I was in for five weeks and I’m here until the end. It was an amazing experience to be able to do this,” Gomez said. “Our saying was, ‘Together, we got this.’ Strangers, all coming together for one cause. We became friends and we did it until the end.”
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