NEWVILLE, Pennsylvania — It all started because Rebecca Fickel liked to wear headbands.
“Whenever I was early high school age, I wore headbands all the time. I always loved being crafty, so I was just interested in trying something new. I found a YouTube video and started making headbands for myself,” said the 19-year-old Shippensburg University student.
“Then, I would wear them at school all the time, and then, it became the thing I would always do. People would be, like, ‘Oh, look, Becca’s not wearing a headband, oh, no, what’s wrong?'” she said, laughing from her home here in Cumberland County.
“Some of my other friends would ask me to make them for them, and of course, I did,” she explained. “Then, I just got the idea to start selling them because I’ve always been a natural businesswoman, I’d say.”
She then made an Instagram account, and it took off from there.
But that was then; this is now.
In front of her is not one, but two sewing machines and stacks of colorful swatches of material that she has either bought or has been donated to her. In the past two weeks, she has gone from one sewing machine that kept breaking down to one on lend and funding to buy a new one.
And she has gone from hair fashionista to mask manufacturer, along with attending college full time and working full time at the local Sheetz.
It began when a family friend who worked at a nursing home sent her an article about fabric masks and asked her if she could make them for her healthcare staff.
“Sure, I can take a stab at it,” said Fickel. “I was actually in Walmart, anyway, so I’ll get the fabric, we’ll try it out.”
So, she got some fabric, sewed them that night, and they worked out.
She posted the finished product on Facebook for her friends, went to bed, and thought nothing of it.
The next morning, she had 15 messages from people asking if she could make them one. In 24 hours, she had more than 100.
“It really got crazy really fast,” she said. “I’ve just had tons of orders for people that I don’t even know personally. So, I’ve had to sort of hire my mom to help me read through all my messages and write stuff down because I was getting messages on Facebook, on Instagram, texting me, calling me.”
Fickel said she lost count at this point of how many she has made. She does not ask for a specific price, just for a donation of between $3 and $5. And she doesn’t keep the money: It goes directly to her favorite charity at her church.
“They have a ministry in our church called PAW Packs, and they feed families, mainly kids in the community where they don’t have access to food at home either after school or on the weekends,” she explained.
“I am passionate about that, just meeting the needs of my local community. I always knew about that organization before all this happened. And then, once the virus set in, they posted a few times about how the number of families in need increased like crazy due to the school lunches not being provided anymore.”
She continued: “We don’t live in the most wealthy area, and a lot of families really rely on the services that the school provides. I mean, kids need to eat, so I chose that because I knew that it would make a big difference right now.”
In just over a couple of weeks, Fickel has raised over $1,500.
Fickel is in her freshman year of school, majoring in business and marketing and management. But it is clear she’s already earned the equivalent of an MBA in experience in less than a month.
Her Ph.D. in humanity comes from within.
Fickel’s compassion is the kind of story that gets buried in the news in our lust for the outrage that now drives coverage, coverage often plucked from social media, rather than reported from places such as Cumberland County.
It’s also the kind of story that is much more reflective of who we are, period.
