ICU Nurse Starts Donation Pantry To Help Families of Fellow Frontline Workers During Covid

Meet Stacy, an intensive care nurse and frontline worker for Covid-19 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, who went above and beyond to help her fellow workers and their families during the pandemic. 

Like many frontline workers, Stacy's extra hours on the job meant that her family members had to adjust to some additional changes at home amid the Covid pandemic. "My two children did not understand why they couldn't hug me for a while," Stacy says. "We had to have this set routine of, Mommy would come home and you could say hi, but you couldn't really touch her until I went and showered and my laundry went in the washing machine."

Plus, finding necessities at the store proved just as difficult for Stacy as it was for many of us during this time, especially because she had limited windows where she could do the shopping outside of work. "I'm the main shopper in my family, so I would go get groceries when I was off or after shift. Especially after shift, you wouldn't be able to buy the things you need," she explains.

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"And we had other counterparts in the ICU who couldn't find things like diapers and wipes for their children. And then somebody would find them at another store and then they would bring them in and leave them for that other associate. That's really where the idea for the 'pantry' came from, was, 'What can we do to help our coworkers, what can we do to help our friends to all get through this collectively together?'"

"I thought, if we can do this in an intensive care setting of 70-something staff members, we can do this as a whole healthcare system," Stacy says of the "pantry." "It functions very much like a lending library, so we ask that you take what you need, no questions asked. And if you are able to donate, you donate what you can."

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"The story broke about the pantry at the hospital and since then the donations [and] the community support has been overwhelming. To have that support from our community means the absolute world to us," Stacy says. "Going forward, we really hope to make this a permanent fixture here at the hospital. And if it spreads further and goes to other hospitals or other organizations, we are very happy to be the catalyst for that."

Rach was able to thank Stacy for all that she's doing, and share the news that our friends at Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day were so inspired by Stacy's story that they are donating $10,000, as well as 1,000 units of product to the pantry at her hospital!

Stacy is part of our "Nice List" series, highlighting amazing people doing good in their communities this holiday season. Read more good news stories here.