Harriet Tom, an instructional technician for the Food Science and Nutrition Department, did not plan on starting a second profession when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Central Valley in March.

However, once she saw the need for facial protection for front-line health care providers, she soon enlisted other volunteers with the same generosity to help make nearly 3,000 masks for area hospitals.

The project began while she started making a handful of masks for family members. Her daughter, Andrea Tom, a Fresno State business alumna, posted a picture on Facebook about the family project that also included her brother, Nicholas, a Fresno State freshman kinesiology student.

They immediately got responses on social media asking about the pattern, so Harriet posted a weblink to the original template that she had altered. Next came requests from medical worker friends who asked if they could purchase multiple masks since none were available from their hospitals.

“It took me a little time to get everything figured out,” said Tom, “partly since I honestly hadn’t sewn in years. But this is all about helping others, which is the same thing everyone else is thinking about right now. I was ready to do whatever I could do.”

Harriet reached out to Clarence Chiong, a Fresno State employee who manages the campus trademark licensing program. She asked if she could use one or two of his confiscated tshirts to test how the material might work for masks.

Chiong had amassed hundreds of illegally-trademarked shirts that were intercepted from street vendors on Bulldog athletic game days. He gave her a few samples, and received permission soon after from campus administration to give her 300 shirts from his stockpile. Days later, he had coordinated the donation of more than 500 unused promotional shirts from the athletic department and 144 shirts from the Kennel Bookstore on campus.

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