Anticipating needs, Pine Bluffs residents "pull together" for COVID-19 relief

Both Ladd and her husband have underlying health concerns, and they’ve been following health officials’ guidelines to self-quarantine for weeks. Making a trip to the stores in Cheyenne to buy the fabric and elastic for the masks wasn’t a possibility for Ladd, so she reached out via Facebook Messenger to a group now known as Pine Bluffs Hands and Feet to ask for help.

The group, which is a space to request or offer resources to other residents, is one of several ways some of the roughly 1,142 people living in Pine Bluffs are stepping up to help one another during a time of uncertainty.

“I had what I needed within one day,” said Ladd, who tacked a sign onto her front door instructing people to leave all deliveries outside and limit social contact. “Now, I’ve got fabric coming out of my ears.”

Over the past three weeks, Ladd has created more than 225 masks and donated them to essential workers in Wyoming and Colorado. The requests for more masks haven’t stopped, and Ladd said, “It’s because of that Facebook group that word has spread.”

Dan DeBruyn, the pastor at Crossroads Community Church, said he started the group, first as a big group message, a couple of weeks ago.

“I have been able to get a pulse on the community, and to some degree anticipate their needs,” said DeBruyn, who has relied on some of his tech-savvy parishioners to organize the Facebook group, as well as livestream his sermons.

This is his 19th year leading the church, but he said he’s never faced anything like the pandemic-induced public gathering shutdown.

“We didn’t know what the needs of Pine Bluffs and the surrounding communities would be, but I did want to get ahead of it,” DeBruyn said.

The 253 laboratory confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Wyoming (as of Friday) is a far smaller number than the tens of thousands of cases confirmed in more populated states like New York and California, where thousands of people have already perished from virus-related complications.

But that hasn’t slowed the harsh economic effects created by the sudden shutdown of offices, restaurants and event spaces across Wyoming. Pine Bluffs hasn’t been hit as hard as some of the more populated areas, but there’s no guarantee it will stay that way.

DeBruyn said he’s “anticipating that we’ll be catching up with Cheyenne, in terms of food, rent and other bills people will need help with.”

That’s why last week DeBruyn’s church stepped out into the 3D world again and helped launch the Pine Bluffs Food Bank. It’s not income restricted, and it’s open from 9-11 a.m. Mondays and Wednesdays at Pine Bluffs Historic High School on 607 Elm St.

“Now we have a location for people to go,” DeBruyn said.

The organizers of the food bank have also created a separate Facebook group by the same name, where people can post their requests.

“It’s kind of a real-time way of meeting people’s needs,” said DeBruyn, who’s already made a few trips to the store after people posted in the group.

“Our grocery store here has been kind of picked through,” said Matt Hockersmith, a farmer who helped open the food bank with DeBruyn and other community members. “So my mom and I went to Sam’s Club in Cheyenne to get food and get started, and here we are.”

As soon as the food bank opened last week, people started calling in, offering donations, as well as asking for home deliveries. They’ve already donated between seven and 15 boxes of nonperishable goods.

“It’s hard for people who are self-isolating to get out and get food, regardless of whether they can afford it,” said Hockersmith.

The primary goal of the food bank, Hockersmith said, is to provide for Pine Bluffs and the close surrounding areas first. But he said that “if we build up a nice bounty of food, we’ll probably start bringing to the Cheyenne. I’m sure they’ll need it.”

Although Pine Bluffs is more than 20 miles from the nearest big box grocery store in Cheyenne, the sprawling farmlands in the rural parts of Laramie County also have yielded food donations.

Hockersmith has already donated 25 pounds of pinto beans he grew on his land to the food bank. The beans arrived at the food bank around the same time as several dozen fresh eggs, courtesy of Joshua Tangeman, who has raised chickens for years, but has never thought of selling eggs as a business.

“We just like to give them to people,” he said.

Last week, Tangeman’s wife, Wendy, was browsing Facebook when she found the food bank’s page. “We decided we wanted to donate. So we did,” said Tangeman, whose 10 chickens produce an average of 70 eggs per week.

Eggs and beans aren’t the only farm-fresh product people are looking for right now.

Jill Klawonn, who co-owns High Point Bison, typically sells her grass-fed meat at the farmer’s market in Cheyenne. But since the shutdown, she’s already made some new customers amid an increased demand for home delivery.

“I’ve seen a lot more bulk buying. People are wanting to buy 10 or 20 pounds of meat, rather than make several trips to the grocery store,” said Klawonn, who suspects some of the concern is coming from customers’ fear of walking into crowded grocery stores and possibly catching the virus.

Klawonn, whose delivery drivers are now logging around 100 miles a week, is offering the service free of charge.

“Our customers have been so loyal to us. We wanted to make sure they have one less worry during this time,” she said.

That willingness to help during a crisis, Klawonn said, is simply emblematic of rural Wyoming’s character.

“One thing you can always remember is that we’re a pretty resilient bunch. We always pull together.”