Under unprecedented calls for help, Weld businesses and agencies respond, even as their own resources dwindle

The Weld Food Bank sees an uptick of folks who need its services. Photo by Dan England.

By Dan England

As he was sitting in his backyard enjoying a beverage and the full, Princess Peach pink moon, Kyle Carbaugh heard a chorus of howls and became inspired. 

Carbaugh thought of a seltzer.

Well, what did you expect? Carbaugh is a beer brewer, not a werewolf, or even a Wolverine. And yet, even if the seltzer (probably) won’t save the world, it may help ease the unprecedented pain caused by the coronavirus. 

The pain is, indeed, unlike anything Greeley officials have ever experienced. It makes the Flood of 2013 look like a trickle. It makes the Windsor tornado look like a breeze. It makes the Great Recession of 2008 look like misplacing your wallet. And it’s not only the worst disaster officials have ever seen, there doesn’t appear to be an end to it. The flood waters receded. Windsor did rebuild. Even housing prices skyrocketed again. But the virus keeps spreading, and people are still stuck inside. 

“I never thought that a disaster would do this,” said Jeannine Truswell, president of the United Way of Weld County. “I never thought I would see a disaster that would affect every corner and every person. I don’t think we think of a disaster that way. And yet here we are.”

And yet, the United Way, just like the Weld Food Bank, just like the City of Greeley, are all helping in some way, along with dozens of other stalwarts such as the Weld Community Foundation. But businesses, musicians and even the average person, all of them hurting, are also helping.

Carbaugh, the founder of Wiley Roots with his wife, Miranda, wanted to help in some way, but a beer brewer’s limited superpower is creating tasty beverages. That’s where Carbaugh’s Howl At The Moon seltzer comes in. 

The drink was, in part, inspired by the nightly 8 p.m. howls to honor health care workers. But it’s also a partnership with the brewer WeldWerks, Wiley’s Downtown Greeley neighbor, who sparked Carbaugh’s desire to help (besides the moon) after he read about Weld’s efforts to make hand sanitizer. WeldWerks will distribute the beer for free (Wiley normally pays them to do it), and the money from the seltzer should raise $5,000, about half of what WeldWerks budgeted to make a new batch of sanitizer. 

The seltzer is blood orange, appropriate for these times (and the moon), and Scott Carpenter, the marketing guy for Wiley Roots, believes people will like it, as it is sweeter than many seltzers. He likes it too, and of course you would expect him to say that, but he normally doesn’t drink seltzers. 

“We never distributed it, but it was really popular in the tap room,” Carpenter said of Wiley Roots’ seltzers. The blood orange is the beer maker’s third kind.

Regardless of whether it rides the wave of the seltzer trend, Carpenter hopes the idea behind it helps people feel a tiny bit better as they endure the coronavirus crises. It should be released Friday: As a sign of these Murphy’s Law times, a batch of yeast was damaged in the shipment, delaying the brew by a few days. 

“We are small, but if we can do what we consider to be a huge batch and distribute it across Colorado, there’s also this sense of community,” Carpenter said. “We are hoping they buy it and howl at the moon together while drinking the seltzer.”

The hits keep coming

Since we haven’t discussed disasters enough, let’s use one that has no chance of spawning here. 

“It’s like the hurricane is still happening,” Truswell said. “The first minute my foot hits the floor, all of a sudden what I thought my day would look like explodes, and there’s a whole new set of problems to deal with. But I think that’s true of lots of folks.”

When the virus really hit, just before Polis issued the stay-at-home order, calls to 211 overwhelmed the United Way staff, so much so that Truswell pulled people from Volunteers in Service to America and put them on phone lines and eventually hired workers from grant money to ride the unprecedented waves coming in for help or questions. During the worst days, Truswell said, 211 in our region fielded close to 1,000, but on some days after the stay-at-home order more than 2,000 called  in. Those include many questions about health care, which Truswell’s never experienced before, as people ask repeatedly about the shifting guidelines they should follow and hear inconsistent information from the media, health care professionals and the White House. 

The virus affects everyone, but it’s still hitting the most vulnerable the hardest, Truswell said, just like every crises. Those 211 calls first came about food, and now more than 40 percent are hoping for some rental assistance, and even if Gov. Polis’ encouragement to landlords to delay payments works, eventually tenants will have to pay. Food is number two, and utility assistance is number three, the basics you’d expect, but all those health care questions are right behind. The calls come in waves, and all waves are much higher than anything experienced from Weld’s biggest past disasters: Greeley’s meatpacking plant, for instance, which employs thousands, recently closed. 

The virus not only increases the need, it knocked out traditional ways to deal with it. The United way contracted with Catholic Charities to provide nighttime housing for the homeless, but that shelter had to reduce its population to a third of the 100 people it serves a night to respect social distancing. The homeless now are in the buildings at Island Grove Regional Park until at least April 30, covered in part by volunteers serving a huge increase in meals and Community Development Block Grant money from the City of Greeley. 

There are other needs, as the pain spreads from one person to another: There already was a huge shortage in child care homes in the area, Truswell said, as the jobs are tough, exhausting and don’t pay well, and now the coronavirus have either closed them, brought layoffs or left them in limbo as they apply to be considered non-essential.

“We’ve named early childhood as a stake in the sand for us, as we truly believe the more we can do to get them to a good start, the more than helps all our other missions,” she said. “But those small businesses are now really struggling.”

There’s also a desperate need for diapers, baby wipes and formula, as 211 deals with pleading phone calls from mothers who can’t afford them or can’t find them or both. The Federal Emergency Management Administration just sent a huge pallet of those products, and Truswell prays those help. 

Perhaps no other industry was hit as hard as restaurants, and Mayor John Gates had a message for them: “I know you are suffering and you are concerned about what the future may hold. We will do everything in our power to help you.”

That’s come in $250,000 for grants to city businesses in collaboration with the City of Evans and the Greeley Area Chamber of Commerce. Those businesses must be in operation for at least six months and solvent as of March 1 and have applied for another government relief fund. It can be used for just about everything to keep their business going. 

“We’re trying to help our businesses get to the ‘recovery’ phase when they can get going again,” Gates said. 

Gates and Patty, his wife, have enjoyed quite a bit of take out lately, and he hopes other residents see that as a real way to help, even when everyone is hurting. Maybe buy some Pokemon cards from the Nerd Store as well. 

“I continue to be concerned about our small businesses and restaurants and their ability to survive this,” Gates said. 

A few minutes before noon on Monday, the traditional time for lunch, volunteers were flying around like the worker bees they’ve had to be for a month preparing emergency food kits. They call them “boxes,” but there’s enough produce and other food to fill a cart. A steady line of cars waited. 

“We are a lot busier than ever,” said Daniel Malloy, who teaches at Aims Community College and has volunteered for the food bank for three years. “But it has slowed a touch. We actually have some lull periods now.”

The work is more difficult not only because the need for emergency boxes is up 50 percent, it’s because volunteers are putting together the kits now, as no one is allowed inside, yet another example of how the virus attacks the help as well as the hurting. Most food bank clients could help themselves before the restrictions. 

“It’s a lot more running around and heavier lifting,” Malloy said. 

A plethora of new volunteers have helped. Bob O’ Connor, the food bank’s executive director, gushes over them. But many of their steady volunteers were older, and those people need to stay at home. Corporate volunteers have also stopped coming. That means all the troupes of high school kids and other organizations are inexperienced. 

New volunteers show up to help at Weld Food Bank. Photo by Dan England.

“It’s really great they are here,” said Ric Hupalo of Greeley, who brought a bag of dog food for a homeless person to feed a pet and has since volunteered for nearly two years. “But they all need training, and that takes a lot of time.”

More than 20 percent of the demand comes from new clients, people they’ve never seen before, and it keeps jumping every day, O’Connor said. 

Supply chains may be broken because of the problems, O’Connor said, and that could be devastating, especially damaging the plentiful supply of produce. 

“Even looking around from last week,” O’Connor said, “it’s a lot lighter.”

• • • 

Not everyone enjoyed them, but there were boom times before the coronavirus began spreading, and that will help cover short-term losses for now.

“We went into this in great financial condition, but this will sting,” Gates said.

Already, a month into the crises, the prevailing thought is the pain will last a while. Gov. Polis warned of a slow period before the economy gets going in fits and starts, nowhere near the immediate fix protestors seemed to want as they lined up at the state capitol Sunday demanding that businesses be allowed to reopen. Even when that does happen, shoppers may stay away, out of a need to save or a wariness of the virus. Restaurants had a horrible March even before Polis issued the stay-at-home order.

“I think this will go on for a year,” O’Connor said, “even as people get back to work.”

That worries him, given that the food bank can take this kind of demand for three to four months before supplies will run low. 

Contributors added $250,000 to a Weld Recovers relief fund in partnership with the Community Foundation, and they’ve distributed $92,000 of it for grants, which helped cover cleaning supplies, food and money  for prescriptions, rent and utility programs. But that money comes with a cost as well, Truswell said. The donations may be all most can give for the year, or they may eat up their charitable budgets, or givers may assume that the money they donate will cover the expenses of the non-profits. 

But those non-profits took a double hit, the kind the virus is so dastardly at handing out. Not only is the need much greater than they’ve ever experienced, but social distancing forced them to close events that raised thousands in the past, even their top fundraisers of the year. Many of the non-profits, just like many people, essentially live paycheck to paycheck, where even gathering just half of the expected revenue from a fundraiser would really hurt, let alone not receiving any at all. 

Truswell knows the United Way itself faces a serious situation, as their annual campaign approaches and they were unable to reach out to some major donators because of the stay-at-home order. 

“We have the same concern that other agencies have,” Truswell said. “We are very concerned for just our own general operations.”

The need for mental health may be greater than ever as well, and that could be from obvious concerns about money or just from the isolation many feel from social distancing and having their world change so drastically. Many of the non-profit workers, essential workers and health care workers probably will have some form of PTSD, if they don’t already have it, Truswell said. 

That’s partly why Tim Coons organization a series of concerts, “Songs for Weld County,” for Facebook Live on behalf of the Weld Community Foundation, where he works in community outreach and communication. Coons paid local artists from a grant from the Bohemian Foundation, famous for putting Bohemian Nights in Fort Collins, and will host a series that should run well into May. Donations will go to the Weld Recovers fund. 

“But I’m at this as momentum marketing,” Coons said. “I’m hoping a group will hear about us here and the need for help and it will go from there.”

The work is part of a revolution as musicians turn to virtual concerts and online shows to help pay their bills, but they were one of the hardest hit groups as well, as playing live pays their bills. Coons, who plays in the group Giants and Pilgrims with his wife, the artist Betony Coons, was inspired to put it on after he put on his own show and was moved to tears as the number of people who came to watch and comment on how great it was to see him perform. 

“We are looking to our creatives to band us together,” Coons said, “and I just think that’s beautiful.”

 How to help 

You can donate online at www.unitedway-weld.org/covid-19 or weldcommunityfoundation.org. 

All agencies need help and will take individual donations as well, or your time, as volunteers are needed at places such as the Weld Food Bank.