OMAHA — Goodwill and Max I. Walker have teamed up to provide medical scrubs for Creighton healthcare professionals, Max I. Walker notes.
When Creighton University School of Medicine students contacted Goodwill Industries, Inc. (Goodwill Omaha), asking if the nonprofit organization’s thrift stores had any medical scrubs on the racks that they could spare, staff from Goodwill Omaha, and local dry cleaner Max I. Walker, jumped into action.
“Our stores are temporarily closed right now due to the coronavirus threat, so our retail operations team went store to store and collected every piece of scrubs they could find,” says Tobi Mathouser, president and COO at Goodwill Omaha.
“They found more than 375 pairs of scrubs,” Mathouser says. The donation is for a medical scrub drive that Creighton’s medical students are holding to collect the garments and donate them to healthcare workers at CHI’s Bergen Mercy.
“There is an increased demand for scrubs at the hospitals due to heightened precautions for doctors and nurses to be able to decontaminate themselves as they travel to and from home and the hospital,” says Adrienne Pyle, a third-year medical student at Creighton School of Medicine and drive’s organizer.
“With these extra scrubs, the medical professionals will be able decontaminate themselves with frequent scrub changes and thereby keep their patients and own families safe,” she says.
Goodwill needed a partner to launder the scrubs for the healthcare workers. They found one in local dry cleaner Max I. Walker.
“We’re committed to giving back to the community that’s supported us for more than 100 years, so when we got the call, this was something we really wanted to do,” says Casey Walker, director of retail operations at Max I. Walker.
“With the current pandemic, healthcare workers are on the frontlines, and if we could help them, we absolutely wanted to,” says Walker.
Goodwill dropped off the scrubs at the Max I. Walker location in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where Walker’s team laundered them. Then Goodwill and Max I. Walker’s retail operations teams picked up the scrubs in Council Bluffs and delivered them to Creighton for distribution to Bergen Mercy doctors and nurses.
Family owned Max I. Walker Cleaners & Launderers was founded by Max I. Walker on March 17, 1917. Over the past 103 years, it has grown into a company with hundreds of employees serving customers at 22 locations in and around Omaha.
Goodwill Industries, Inc., serving Eastern Nebraska and Southwest Iowa, has been a leader in helping people fulfill their dreams through work since 1933. “Our mission is to train and employ people with disabilities and others who may be at a competitive disadvantage in the job market.”
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Dave Davis at [email protected].