Well she’s at it again. My soon-to-be-ex and I knew Rhonda Shearer right after 9/11, when she fought the idiots at FEMA and NYC DEP to provide equipment and water to first responders who were not getting adequate equipment to go safely back up onto Ground Zero. (FEMA and NYC kept trying to get her to stop making them look bad.) She did it for 9 months) She provided it from her own money and contributions, and my wife worked at her unit—I couldn’t, the toxic air was killing me. Anyway, she is the widow of world-famous Stephen Jay Gould, whom we me a couple of times before he passed.
Housing Works CEO Charles King also credits Shearer with the idea that Housing Works start a high-end thrift store to raise money and employ clients. They now have 12 throughout the city.
As the article in WaPo indicates, she is at it again—collecting available PPE, and using her own money/credit and contributions to disburse it, this time with hospitals providing the resistance.
New York’s patron saint of PPE went $600,000 in debt to outfit workers — and hospitals keep turning her down
There was nothing but navy, teal and baby blue all the way down the block, as hospital workers in layers of protective gear streamed into a line that captured the attention of three police cars.
They were headed to an open box truck with a big sign taped to the side: “Show your hospital ID: Get free PPEs.”
Some wanted to know whom to thank, and they’d inevitably be waved over to a slight, blond woman named Rhonda Roland Shearer. Just as she had done after 9/11, when she spent nine months distributing millions of dollars in supplies to workers at Ground Zero that she’d mobilized herself, Shearer was in the thick of things — having once again leveraged a substantial line of credit to do so.
Enjoy the story, and send her a contribution if you can. She isn’t keeping any reimbursements. And she’s a pretty big deal as heroines go.
