A former intern in Arlington’s Dept. of Environmental Services has helped the county obtain 1,400 masks for workers.
The intern, Lucie, interned for DES in 2016 and has since been attending school in Hawaii, though she is currently back in her native China amid the coronavirus outbreak. Through a friend who runs a trading company in Hong Kong, she heard about a shipment of 1,400 face masks sitting in Los Angeles and immediately thought of her former colleagues.
Lucie reached out to DES, according to department spokesman Peter Golkin, to see if the masks might be of use. When she was told they were, she and some other friends — including a George Mason University grad student — raised money to cover the cost of the shipment to Arlington, Golkin said.
Now, frontline workers in the Water, Sewer, Streets Bureau, one of the bureaus in which Lucie interned, have access to construction-grade face masks that can help them stay healthy while on the job patching potholes, fixing water main breaks and maintaining other essential infrastructure. And the shipment came at a time when personal protective equipment of all types is in short supply.
“Thanks Lucie and company!” DES said via social media on Monday.