From The Tribune staff reports
TRUSSVILLE — Wanda McKoy saw an opportunity to help.
With a little assistance from her daughter, Jayna Moore, McKoy has fashioned more than 2,000 face masks during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“Right now, I can’t even keep enough on the table,” said McKoy. “I have several people coming by later for pickup.”
McKoy, a Trussville resident, spends hours each day cutting fabric and sewing masks for people in her community, and in rare occasions, people from other states. She began her project shortly after Governor Kay Ivey issued a state of emergency in March. And she has not looked back.
“I think I eventually felt guilty that I was doing okay and some other people were not, so I started making these masks for older groups,” said McKoy. “I started out working with Positive Maturity—an organization that keeps older people active—and I made a lot of masks for them.”
She later provided face masks for a few local churches, and now, nearly four months into the venture, McKoy is well beyond 2,000 masks made. The exact figure is gone. She stopped keeping track somewhere around 1,500.
It costs her somewhere between $3 and $6 to make a single face mask, depending on the material. Her prices are $2 for adult and youth masks, $4 for Alabama and Auburn masks, and senior citizens shop free of charge.
“I just have a soft spot in my heart for older people that can’t get around as well as some of us can,” said McKoy.
She can arrange orders by text at 205-222-0555 and accepts both cash and Venmo payments.