Through the window of her room at Starling Assisted Living Facility, a resident waived hello and spoke to a loved one. She’s one of many across the country, and the world who is not able to get close to a loved one due to the coronavirus (COVID-19).
“We’ve been doing FaceTime chats with our residents and their families,” Megan Kennedy, Vice President of Operations at Starling, said. “We’ve been facilitating chats through windows. Just this past Saturday we had a sidewalk chalk activity scheduled where families could come in and the community could come in and write messages to our team members and our residents,” she said. “My biggest takeaway is seeing everybody come together and really understand that we need to do our part to keep our senior citizens safe."
Two people who have helped keep those senior citizens and the staff safe are complete strangers, Tim and Lauren Mobley of the company Mobility Plus.
“We signed the lease to our brick and mortar on the eighteenth of February, and before we could even get our sign up, we along with so many other small business owners were impacted by COVID-19,” Tim Mobley said.
They sell scooters, ramps and lifts to senior citizens, and eventually hoped to sell medical equipment.
“We’re unable to open to the public,” Tim Mobley said.
Due to the coronavirus, though, they’re not selling too much. They did, however, have shipments that were already scheduled to come in, including 10,000 pairs of medical gloves.
“We looked at each other [Tim and his wife] and said, ‘we don’t have customers we can provide this to at this point, but what we do have are so many people throughout the community that are in need,” Tim Mobley said.
They decided to donate the 10,000 gloves to retirement communities and assisted living facilities in the area, like Starling.
“We were absolutely enthusiastic in saying yes very quickly," Kennedy said. "Our normal supply chains are taxed right now, and we were struggling to find gloves and PPE [personal protective equipment] in order to keep our staff as safe as possible, so we jumped at the opportunity for a donation. That’s why we’re all in healthcare- we want to help our residents. We want to help our team members because they’re on the frontlines taking care of our residents, so to be able to receive this donation and help both residents and team members, we’re so grateful for it."
The Mobley's aren’t sure what will happen to Mobility Plus when this is all over. They do know, they said, that they’ll do what they can to make sure everyone makes it through this.