GIVING BACK
Sun Valley’s Hannah Vickers doing her part to support health care workers on front lines of COVID-19 fight »
Hannah Vickers has watched a lot of movies since her school shut down two weeks ago in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Yet that’s not the only way the Sun Valley senior spent some down time.
With the help of other members of the National Honor Society at Sun Valley, Vickers started a letter writing campaign to thank healthcare workers who are on the front lines in the fight against the outbreak.
Vickers, a second-team All-Delco and first-team all-Ches Mont League selection in volleyball last fall, has collected more than 150 letters to deliver to nurses, doctors, EMTs and other healthcare professionals.
“My mom (Charlene) was doing it with her work and she told me about it and I definitely wanted to take part in it because I wanted to say thank you and that’s the easiest way to do it, to give back,” Vickers said by phone Sunday. “I talked to my honor society counselor (Ken McCormick, a social studies teacher at Sun Valley) and I opened it up to the rest of the honor society. A lot of people dropped letters off to me or emailed them to me so that I could print them out and do it for them. … It was pretty cool.”
Some of the letters have been mailed out. Others she plans to deliver in person while observing social distancing guidelines.
“I know Crozer nurses who are family friends and we’re going to drop it off in their mail boxes,” Vickers said, referencing Crozer Chester Medical Center in
Upland.
That’s not all Vickers, her friends and family have done to put out positive vibes in these trying times.
“We’re doing a lot of food donations to hospitals, like ordering them lunches and stuff,” Vickers said. “We also delivered cards to elderly people in nursing homes who are closed off from their families. We got a few cards with pictures and stuff. I put a few riddles in there, just something to brighten up their day.”
Being involved in charitable causes is a family tradition. Charlene Vickers is the director for community investment for AmeriHeath Caritas in Tinicum and one of the programs she oversees is called Care Crew. It is an employee volunteer program that encourages family and friends of employees to participate. That includes her family.
“Hannah and my other daughter (Ryan) and my husband (Keith) tag along when we do a lot of these volunteer efforts,” Charlene Vickers said.
Everything is done with safety in mind. She’s presenting the employees with options in virtual volunteerism.
“That’s sort of in DNA,” Charlene said. what we do there.”
The Vickers are following the same safety precautions with the distribution of the letters Hannah and her friends have collected.
“We’re really working with a lot of the non-profits our “It’s and determining what they will receive and what they won’t because there’s some sensitivity about how we can get this information to them,” Charlene said. “We want to be very cognizant that there is a lot of uncertainty about the virus and how long it will live on surfaces.
“For example, some of her friends contributed to the numbers by dropping letters off in the mail and putting them in envelopes. I made sure we took them carefully out of the envelopes using gloves. We’re disinfecting everything. We’re going to follow whatever the non-profit or the hospital or the healthcare organizations protocols are with regard to getting that information to them.”
Hannah Vickers planned to use the spring to finalize her college choice, which was down to Saint Joseph’s, Temple, Penn State, Drexel and La Salle. She was going to visit each campus a second time, but the outbreak scrubbed those plans because the colleges are closed. So she said it looks like she will go to Saint Joseph’s, where she plans to major in pharmaceutical marketing and play club volleyball.
Meanwhile, she will use the time she planned to get one final look at colleges to say thank you to the health care workers on the front line in the fight against coronavirus, and to bring a little joy to the elderly who are shut off from their families.