In early 2020 Covid-19 crippled the world. Everything was practically shut down and a new hero emerged from the chaos. These heroes wore scrubs and face masks instead of camouflage and guns. Our frontline health care workers courageously went every day to go and fight an invisible enemy! I should know because my mom is one of them. But like most Americans, I sat at home feeling helpless. As the pandemic spread, I found myself wondering about homeless vets like the one I met a year before, I wondered how they were doing during the pandemic. Certainly, things could not have gotten better for them.
It was then I had the idea to do something creative. I would start a GoFundMe campaign to honor frontline health care workers (by sending a Heroic Flag to a hospital in every state) and donate the net proceeds to Turning Points to support their Yellow Ribbon Program.
I launched the project on the 4th of July, 2020 and after a slow start I got media attention. After a Fox and Friends interview on August 4th, things exploded! In a couple of days, we raised about $20,000 on GFM and had many direct sales as well. We also had countless blessings and good wishes sent our way. The generous support from hundreds of people (like you), was overwhelming and inspiring.
We ultimately achieved our goal and shipped all the flags to hospitals around the nation and during Christmas week of 2020 we donated $30,000 to the Yellow Ribbon program at Turning Points! What an amazing Christmas gift we could all be proud of.
