Meissner-Davirro and Paddle Santa Barbara organized fundraising paddles for Halloween and Christmas.
Nichol Des Jardins Clark, a clinical nurse at Cottage Hospital, wrote on the Paddle Santa Barbara Facebook page about what the paddle out means: “COVID has touched so many of us. As nurses, it’s so hard loving somebody for weeks and fighting for them and losing them and not being able to hold their families, or talk to them and grieve.
“We love them and then lose them, totally lose them because we were only family for a little bit and then they are gone, and we aren’t family and don’t know they’re real people. And the grief has no place to go.