RI nurse sewing masks in free time, donating them to those that need them

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) – Being on the front lines against the pandemic right now you’d think would be exhausting enough.

But one Rhode Island nurse is using the time before and after her shifts to sew as many masks as she can, and donating them to those who need them.

Like many health care professionals right now, Nurse Hilda Cepeda of Woonsocket, is stressed out.

“I wish I can do more,” she said

For the last 13 years she’s worked at the Providence VA Medical center, and right now she says it’s been extremely tough to see the toll things have taken on her patients.

“Sad, very sad to see them like that, like hopeless,” she described.

And she says she also recognizes how much it’s all weighing on her coworkers.

“You can tell that everybody with this new virus is having a lot of stress.”

Despite everything going on, Cepeda is going home every night, and starting each day doing something to take some of the stress off of everyone: sewing masks.

“It’s something that I know that somebody is going to use it, and I feel like it’s going to protect them somehow,” said Cepeda.

She coincidentally bought a sewing machine a year ago but hadn’t touched it since – until the virus broke out.

“And I said, ‘Ok, I think I remember how to use it. Let’s start doing masks!'”

The first one, she said, took her about an hour. Now she’s making them every five minutes.

She’s sewn about 500 in the last few weeks, and donated them to local nursing homes, her coworkers, even family and friends in Puerto Rico.

“So even if I come home tired, I take a few minutes. I take at least 10-15 minutes to sit down and relax. And then in my mind I’m like, ‘Okay I have to make six of this, I have to do this,'” she says, shaking her head to show how fast her mind is moving.  “And I do it. I have to!”