She’s 75 and sews coronavirus masks for sheriff’s deputies, day in and day out
Arline Bauman spends her days in a room stacked high with materials, her attention riveted to one of her many sewing machines.
Over the last few days, the 75-year-old Auburn woman has made more than 300 masks for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department to help keep deputies and other personnel safe while dealing with the public amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The masks are black with a thin blue line across the back, a common symbol for law enforcement.
“Every day my husband makes breakfast, and I go to work in the sewing room,” Bauman said. “I’m quite comfortable being cooped up because it’s what I’d normally do.”
Bauman learned to sew when she was in grade school and found such joy in it that she never stopped.
She primarily makes quilts but often sews baby hats to donate to Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital in Tacoma.
When health care officials began talking about masks helping during the coronavirus outbreak, she picked a pretty pattern and found a YouTube tutorial on sewing masks.
Those went to friends and family members, including her son, Joe Bauman.
Joe Bauman was talking one evening with his friend Ed Troyer, who serves as spokesman for the sheriff’s department, when Troyer noticed the masks. Troyer then looked at his key chain, black with a thin blue line, and asked Joe Bauman about making more masks.
Bauman immediately texted his mom, and, by 8 the next morning, Arline Bauman had produced eight masks.
The first ones went to school resource officers who are handing out lunches to Pierce County students every weekday.
“Everybody I showed them to, I had to wrestle them away,” Troyer said.
As quick as Arline Bauman makes them, they’re handed out to detectives, administrative personnel and deputies.
The masks have three layers and are backed with flannel, which Arline Bauman said presents the toughest challenge — folding such thick material.
They’re reversible and machine washable.
It takes her roughly five minutes to make one mask, but she’s developed a system to produce dozens at a time.
“She’s a machine,” Joe Bauman said.
First she cuts the black cloth and piles it up. Then she layers the back of each mask. Next she sews in the elastic.
When she gets tired of staring at all the black, she takes a break and makes some with floral patterns for friends.
“We can’t make them fast enough,” Joe Bauman said, adding that police agencies from Michigan and Georgia have also reached out to them. “We’re trying to get them all taken care of because they’re on the front lines.”
Since they have the materials, Bauman is hoping to find other seamstresses who can help make the masks.
“As long as there’s a need, I’ll keep doing this,” Arline Bauman said.
More are needed for Pierce County sheriff’s employees, and Troyer said the department hopes to have all personnel and county jail inmates in masks by the end of next week.
