Tri-Valley Kids Do Their Part To Protect Local Firefighters

What a group of young kids could do will always surprise adults.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the essential gears is face masks. How could a group of young kids help with this?

If you think and think hard, you could do it.

Andi Liu is a 12th grade student in Dougherty Valley High School and the president of PLAY Leadership, which is a nonprofit organization promoting leadership in aspiring youth. He is a math star and teaches young kids math. He is not only good at making math a fun thing to learn; he could even make the face mask mission come true.

Imagine a group of "nerds" who have fun with tricky math problems and spend so much time giggling about having an equation that works would wake up one day and say, "We want to raise funds to buy face masks for our frontline fighters."

Yes, Andi is that young man. Andi and his math club team took the lead and successfully raised $920 among a group of math kids and their families in only a few days.

Raising funds to buy face masks and to donate to the frontline doctors and nurses and police officers and firefighter are the most trendy fashion in the Asian community now.

"It is time that we want to protect you in our capability," said Grace Li, the president of Tri-Valley Asian Association.

There are a lot of moving stories. One kid has donated his pocket money and red-envelope money, which he got in the Chinese New Year. Shuo Li's 2nd grade younger brother chipped in all of his private savings to this campaign for face masks. Almost every one of the kids donated much more than expected.

Less than a week, a total of 920 dollars was raised. It could buy 1,300 high-quality face masks from China with shipping and handling.

Andi asked the Tri-Valley Asian Association (TVAA) for help. He joined forces with Hunan Association, PLAY math club, and TVAA donated a total of 2,700 face masks to the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department on May 5, and 1,300 more are on the way.

"We have 106 firefighters in total, a third of them will be on duty at any given time. Now we use cloth covers and only use those surgical quality masks when we are on the task. So far, we have 1,300 face mask in stock," said Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Deputy Chief Joseph Testa.

"Thank you for your generous donation. Now when we get home, our family will be worry-free about the possibility of getting Coronavirus. That is a big relief," said Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Deputy Chief Aaron Lacey.

Emily Zhou and Grace Li represent the Hunan Association, and TVAA separately was very happy to have Andi on board. We are together for the fight of COVID-19.

Emily and Grace are veterans in donating the face masks. They have handled donations of more than 40,000 PPE in the past month for the local frontline workers like doctors and nurses, police officers and firefighter. They also helped needy families in local communities.

Behind them are the strong and loving Chinese American families and even their friends in China. Wenli Tian sent over 10,000 PPE to Norcal Ambulance services and Washington Hospitals for her friend in China.

In COVID-19 pandemic, the face mask donation team is getting bigger and younger.

"It looks we are in good hands," said Aaron Lacey, who roots for this younger generation.

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