Sanford employee gets 25,000 masks donated from Taiwan

Wanting Huang is a medical laboratory scientist at Sanford Medical Center in Fargo and is also a Taiwan native.

FARGO, N.D. — All of those who work in the medical field are doing everything they can to keep people safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of those frontline heroes from Sanford took the extra step to make that happen.

Wanting Huang is a medical laboratory scientist at Sanford Medical Center in Fargo. She is also a native of Taiwan. She wanted to do more for her Fargo community and believed her home country was the place that could help.

“She reached out to the embassy in Taiwan. She was so proud that Taiwanese masks are the ones that are used at the White House,” said Huang’s laboratory manager, Alice Hawley.

Taiwan responded generously.

“Pretty soon we had 25,000 masks coming our way through the Taiwanese Embassy,” said Hawley.

The gesture by Huang didn’t come as too much of a surprise for those she works with.

“She really is concerned about us and her fellow coworkers and making sure that we are safe and having everything we need,” said Hawley.

Huang was passionate about bringing the face masks here to Sanford facilities in the Fargo-Moorhead community; a place that has become her second home.

“Usually it is just Taiwan coming into the United States, said Hawley. “Then it was going to be Taiwan coming into North Dakota, and she said ‘No, I want them to come to my institution.'”

The 25,000 masks will be used for Sanford staff. Hawley says this kind of donation is so important to keep the facilities from falling behind in PPE supplies, especially if there is to be a surge of positive cases in the area.

“This is huge. We don’t want to start from a place of trying to catch up. We want to be on top of it so that we can continue to provide safety for our patients.”

Huang’s gesture is doing just that.

Her commitment to fighting the virus and keeping others safe is making people proud in both of the places she calls home.