Spotlight PA
Spotlight PA is an independent, non-partisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters.
Sandra Huffman was cleaning St. Luke’s hospital in Quakertown, gloved and maskless, when she got sick last March. It felt as though a film of spiderwebs had caked her throat, she said. At 54, she was sleeping upright in bed, breathing through a borrowed nebulizer, and drinking an old family remedy of fat Spanish onions congealed in sugar.
She sold her ’86 Chevy Mallard RV, then her mother’s gold jewelry. By late summer she was collecting cans for scrap metal. Huffman did not know that a federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, administered by the state, would provide money for people like her until October.
Sandra Huffman was cleaning St. Lukeâs hospital in Quakertown, gloved and maskless, when she got sick last March. It felt as though a film of spiderwebs had caked her throat, she said. At 54, she was sleeping upright in bed, breathing through a borrowed nebulizer, and drinking an old family remedy of fat Spanish onions congealed in sugar.
She sold her â86 Chevy Mallard RV, then her motherâs gold jewelry. By late summer she was collecting cans for scrap metal. Huffman did not know that a federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, administered by the state, would provide money for people like her until October.
Pittsburgher of the Year: Lisa Scales
As the leader of the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, Scales has mobilized the organization to feed the vulnerable members of our community amid a pandemic that threatens their survival.
January 21, 2021
The rain fell relentlessly as the line of cars inched into the parking lot, backed up further than Lisa Scales could see. Peering through fogged-up glasses, she walked up to each car and asked the driver where she should put the box of food. “In the back seat or the trunk?”
Once the provisions were loaded up, she asked, “How are you holding up?”
Come spring, the Beaver County farm will be idle for the first time since he first turned the soil there in the spring of 1979. Don Kretschmann, 71, is retiring after failing to find someone to take over his 80-acre operation.
With no successor to till the land, farm s days numbered sfchronicle.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sfchronicle.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.