READING, MASS. (WHDH) - A Reading woman is spending her days in self-isolation putting together some generous gifts for health care workers.
Melanie Lawhorne said she had already received thousands of dollars from her Reading community to create the baskets full of snacks, coffee, and other goodies and deliver them directly to nurses in need of a little pick-me-up.
“What I’m doing isn’t even close to what they’re doing every day,” she said.
Her home has now turned into an assembly line, with donations being dropped off right on her front porch.
“Then we bring them in, and we make a little bit of an assembly time here in my living room,” she explained.
Like all good ideas, this one started small with just one gift basket given to a nurse in her community.
“She was just telling me, she hasn’t been home for days, she hasn’t slept, they haven’t been able to eat or get a cup of coffee because everything was shut down,” Lawhorne said. “So, I asked her if it would be OK if I just made her a basket?”
That one basket got the ball rolling on a process that now includes many hands.
Lawhorne’s friends, family, and community have joined forces to make more than 120 snack baskets for hospitals all around greater Boston.
“It really really makes me feel good and honestly this community that I live in is amazing just absolutely amazing,” she said.
When donors are unable to drop snacks off on her porch, they send money. Lawhorne says she has raised more than $3,000 so far.
For her, the photos the nurses send her is the best reward for a job well done.
“It makes me so happy to see the smile behind those masks,” she said. “That’s my goal.”
Anyone interested in donating to Lawhorne’s endeavors can do so by contacting her on Facebook.
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