AWFS® Suppliers’ Edge Newsletter, Spring 2020
Christena wearing one of her mom’s creations.
Angela Hernandez, Executive Assistant at AWFS® is the Association’s longest tenured staff member and will soon be celebrating her 20th year with AWFS®. Recently, she was able to get an inside look at how the coronavirus outbreak has affected the local healthcare system. Angela’s sister, Christena Camacho, has been a nurse for 18 years, the last 11 at Keck Hospital of USC. When Angela and Christena’s mother, Sylvia Lopez, heard that the hospital may be running short on N95 masks due to increasing demand at health facilities around the nation, Sylvia, a long-time sewing and all-around craft enthusiast, decided to “literally” take matters into her own hands by putting her skills to work and making masks for Christena and her colleagues on the front lines.
As any good mother would be, Sylvia was concerned about her daughter and inquired about her well-being, knowing the risks and sacrifices that healthcare workers around the world are currently experiencing on behalf of the rest of us. Christena assured her mom that she was okay and that her faith and “trust in God” would get her through this crisis, since being a nurse isn’t a job but rather, a calling. In fact, Christena’s commitment to helping others can be summarized in one simple quote, “A nurse is not what you do, it is what you are….I am a nurse, it’s not what I do, it’s what I am.” In Sylvia’s case, we think you can take that very same message and substitute the word “nurse” with “mother” as well.
AWFS® thanks all the healthcare workers and volunteers supporting those on the front lines.