TRACY, Calif — Up until about a month ago, 60-year-old Anna Ratto was working at the Save Mart grocery store behind her house in Tracy.
As it became more apparent that the coronavirus would soon become an issue across the country, Ratto decided it was time to go on leave to in hopes that she would never bring the coronavirus home to her family.
Now, with the hours she would have spent at Save Mart, she sits behind the sewing machine working to make hundreds of face masks for her fellow grocery story colleagues.
"Just the last few days I think I've done over 100," Ratto told ABC10 in a video interview.
As Ratto thought about her own experience working in the front of the store, helping bag customers groceries, she thought she should step up in some way.
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Grocery store workers, much like nurses, doctors and other first responders, are considered essential workers amid the coronavirus pandemic. That means, while other people are told stay home to stop the spread of the coronavirus, grocery store workers are greeting and working with people daily.
The same people who could be carriers of the virus.
"When you're a nurse, you go in there knowing you're dealing with sick people," Ratto said. "[Grocery store workers] don't know who they're dealing with."
Ratto and her family are making masks for her former coworkers at the grocery store, including her own son who is still working at the store as a butcher.
The family has even been adding removable pieces of unused air filters they just never got around to installing in their home.
Ratto says they're not the top grade N-95 masks that health care workers should be wearing, but as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention begins to recommend people wear face coverings, something is better than nothing.
"We're not using like a real big piece or anything, just enough to cover the nose and the mouth area," she said.
This family is also making masks for anyone else in the community in need free of charge. (For more information or to make a request, visit Malisa's Instagram account here.)
It's an act of kindness for those often overlooked workers, but Ratto's daughter Malisa says, her mother's kindness is no surprise.
"She's a silent warrior and always has been," Malisa said. "It's true. She's always done things without question for everybody around her and she's never asked for anything back."
Follow the conversation on Facebook with Lena Howland.
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