Airport traffic is slow, so TSA agents made get-well cards for coronavirus patients
Newark NJ April 15 2020 Who doesn’t like receiving a colorful, unexpected greeting card, especially during a lonely hospital stay? Now, imagine what a card means to a patient in the hospital who’s been infected by the coronavirus, cut off from friends and family.
After COVID-19 slowed passenger traffic at Newark Liberty Airport to a trickle, Transportation Security Administration agents turned downtime into a way to encourage medical staff and coronavirus patients in isolation at a medical center in Toms River.
TSA officers went from security to Hallmark mode, using their artistic talents to create 70 handmade cards they sent to patients in isolation and to the medical staff caring for them at Community Medical Center in Toms River, said Lisa Farbstein, a TSA spokeswoman.
The Newark Airport security officers learned of the need from TSA officer Cynthia Hoyles’s whose cousin is a nurse at the medical center. She suggested that get well cards might help the mood of COVID-19 patients at the medical center. Hoyles brought the idea to her TSA co-workers and the project began.
TSA officers got to work, using construction paper, colorful markers, a little glue and their imagination, including some Easter themes and puns.
“The people in isolation, they are getting depressed because they have no visitors, so we hope the cards will help give them hope and brighten their day,” said Hoyles, a TSA employee for a little more than a year.
Ultimately, TSA officers created 70 cards, made “from the heart,” Farbstein said in a release. The officers were eager to participate in the project, Hoyles said.
“They have not heard back from the hospital, but that’s okay. The point was to bring a smile to the faces of those who are on the front lines of the virus—those who are ill and the healthcare workers who are caring for them,” Farbstein said. “The TSA officers know it was the gesture that counts.”
