With personal protection equipment running critically low for doctors and nurses on the frontlines fighting coronavirus, one neighborhood in Hall County is doing what it can to help.

When requests for homemade masks went out last week on social media from nurses within the sprawling Reunion Country Club, a nearly 900 home community in Hoschton, Joanne Giel was ready to get to work. As a retired nurse who also sews and embroiders, she knows how critically important masks are.

“Even though they (the nurses) knew they were not going to be N95 masks, they would be something that would be helping with filtration,” Giel tells WSB’s Sandra Parrish.

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Neighbor Julie Doran got others involved as well.

“We were messaging back and forth… and she was looking for people that wanted to donate elastic or if anybody had any fabric, so nobody would have to go out to stores,” she says.

And the supplies quickly started coming in. Giel washes the material and her husband then irons it. She found patterns online and watched YouTube videos how to make them. Since Friday, she’s made more than 30.

“I put them on my chairs in Ziplock bags and people come and take them; and there’s been a constant stream of people the last three-and-a-half days,” she says.

Doran is among those using her golf cart to distribute them to her neighbors in need.

“We are all kind of being couriers and delivering them to the nurses that need them. And then they would get them, they would wash them again and then deliver them to people that needed them at the hospital,” she says.

Giel is happy to do whatever she can to help those do what she once did.

“If there is anything that’s identified of something that we can do to help, I hope that they let us know and people come forth to help out because there’s no time like the present to help out people--especially our fellow nurses,” she says.