Page 4 THE REVERE ADVOCATE – FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 2020 MASKS | FROM PAGE 1 eight hours a day. “My wife sews; I do auto body work, but I was helping,” said Dennis, who seemed proud of his new stitching skills. Brenda said they started with cotton fabric that was left over from her earlier sewing projects. A lot of it had prints, which was great for the masks being requested for kids, she said. But that stash of fabric didn’t last long, especially with people asking for batches of two, three, five and 20 masks at a time. And there were messages from health care professionals reporting shortages of masks at different hospitals. As they were sewing, the J& $45 yd. S LANDSCAPE & MASONRY CO. MULCH SALE! Discount Spring Special PICK-UP or DELIVERY AVAILABLE 617-389-1490 Premium Hemlock or Pitch Black BELOW WHOLESALE COSTS LANDSCAPERS WELCOME $4 yd. $40 yd. $3 yd. Revere police are a little safer now thanks to the Tarentino family’s gift of homemade face masks. (Courtesy Photos) Tarentinos began considering others in need of masks to stay safe at their jobs. There are food pantry volunteers, school staff who hand out breakfast and lunch for students, and the police, who are continually at risk, so they offered the Revere Police a set of masks from their batch made of colorful fabrics and prints, which were much appreciated. “But the police wanted to know if we could do police colors,” said Dennis, so the Tarentinos bought 40 yards of new fabric and designed a special police mask that was black on the outside and beige inside. And now, both the Revere and Saugus Police are safer thanks to the Tarentinos’ masks. This week, Ashley posted an update on the Tarentinos’ mask making on Facebook. “My mom Brenda Tarentino has been working hard with Dennis Tarentino & Craig Tarentino,” she wrote. “They have made and donated over 700 masks!! They were able to donate to the Revere Police Department, Saugus Police Department, Boston Children’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as well as to many of my fellow therapy colleagues, patients and high-risk family and friends.” Brenda said the family is now cutting back production to a couple of hours a day. “We do some every day, just to keep it going,” she said. “It keeps your mind off of everything that’s going on.” Going forward, the Tarentinos will be offering masks for $5 apiece in order to cover the cost of supplies. They will still donate to Children’s Hospital and other health care providers in need. For Brenda, the best part of the mask project has been the chance to do something to protect others, especially Ashley Tarentino joins the family assembly line to produce homemade masks to protect people during the COVID-19 crisis. Craig Tarentino cuts strips of elastic for his family’s mask production. The Tarentinos designed a special mask in cop colors for the Revere and Saugus Police Departments. people in Revere, during the COVID-19 crisis. “Our community has masks, our friends have them, and all my neighbors have them,” she said. “It gave us something to do and we were able to give something back.”
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