Local woman finds ways to deliver meals to hospitals
The COVID-19 crisis made Amy Novak think, “I just want to do something.” Something to help medical workers and first responders battling on the front lines.
She lives with her family in Hampton and works at Google (as head of organization strategy and programs) and as a life coach. In her free time, she sews.
So she thought, “I’ll make masks!”
But she quickly discovered how complicated that would be. A friend at work emailed a doctor he knows at Allegheny General Hospital to ask what his colleagues need. They don’t want not-FDA-approved masks, the doc replied. They’re hungry. Send in food!
“Well,” Ms. Novak thought, “that’s something I can do.” She is doing it.
She started raising money this
past weekend, and launched a crowdfunding drive on GoFundMe.com on March 23. She shared the news with her followers — all 89 of them — on Twitter, where she describes herself as, “Mom of 3 boys. Wife of Superman. Connoisseur of Starbucks mochas.”
Her fundraising pitch for “Meals For COVID-19 Drs, Nurses, Responders” lauded “healthcare workers and emergency responders who are working incredibly long shifts and no longer have access to cafeterias or other meal services while they support our community.” She invited people to donate funds to buy meals for groups of 20 to 30 from local restaurants — which would help the restaurants, too — and invited interested medical and emergency teams to email her.
She acknowledged how “aggressive” her goal of $10,000 was. But thanks to friends, family and colleagues who also are looking for ways to help — including her heroic stay-at-home husband, Vic — the effort had raised more than $5,000 by Wednesday.
Amy Novak already was working on spending it as quickly as she could.
Starting with that one doctor friend of a friend, she quickly connected with administrators for AGH and a half-dozen other Allegheny Health Network hospitals, as well as with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire. (“My uncle and grandfather both were city firefighters,” Ms. Novak said.) A fire chief told her, We’re good. Help the medical people.
Meanwhile, Ms. Novak was learning that the lunches (per administrators’ request) would have to be individually packaged by a restaurant — nothing family-style, and nothing from a home (several helpers had offered).
Ms. Novak couldn’t deliver the meals or come in — “That’s a bit of a bummer,” she thought — but rather, the restaurant had to bring the food to an entrance for a staffer to receive. Ms. Novak left it up to the administrators to choose whom to treat.
For Friday, she scheduled the first lunch — for AGH’s environmental services staff. They needed 60 meals. A nursing unit there needed 30 more. She ordered 90 lunches from Peppi’s on the North Side, near AGH.
She also ordered 30 lunches from Monroeville’s Gateway Grill to deliver to nearby Forbes Hospital’s facilities team, which also has been working extra hard to keep everything clean.
Then she ordered lunch from Donatos and Panera Bread, both in Erie, Pa., for several teams at AHN Saint Vincent in Erie, including respiratory therapy — 291 meals. So, 411 lunches in one day. “Hallelujah,” Ms. Novak thought.
That was before she added Panera lunch for several teams at Jefferson Hospital in Jefferson Hills to raise the total meals to 511. And in the meantime Thursday, she upped her crowdfunding goal to $15,000, because she had raised, from 80-some donors, $9,000. The bill for Friday’s first round: $4,782.
All the deliveries went out between 11 and 11:30 a.m. Friday. Ms. Novak — working from home with all her boys — took a break between work calls to find out how the lunches were received.
The reviews were raves. But brief. As you can imagine.
“It was fun to coordinate,” said Ms. Novak, adding that she “absolutely” is going to keep this going as long as she can. She already has lined up lunches at other area hospitals — on Saturday for Canonsburg, Wednesday for West Penn — and now she wants to send some to COVID-19 testing sites, too.
She’s even planning to share her system with friends around the country, so maybe they’ll replicate it where they live.
At home in Hampton, her husband is helping with the flood of phone calls, as will her mom. The couple’s three boys — Luke, who is 7; Noah, 3; and Jack, 1 — don’t know everything that’s going on, but they know life is different.
The family made a “Meal Drive Chart,” decorated with marker outlines of the boys’ hands, to track this group effort’s progress. A sticker for every five meals, they decided, so after lunch on Friday, they plastered it with 102 colorful stickers.
In the white spaces below their handwritten thankyous, there is plenty of room for more.
(Update: The effort over the weekend did feed 115 more workers, including 15 at a mobile COVID-19 testing center, and continues to crowdfund —- the amount surpassed $11,000 Sunday afternoon — and schedule more meals. Meanwhile, the Novak boys added 23 more stickers).