A local food services worker at the Comprehensive Care Center in Lompoc is going above and beyond for those closest to her. It's her way of spreading the love during what has been a difficult year for so many.
With each knot she ties on her tie blankets, Trish Fridrich is doing more than just making a blanket to keep someone warm. She spends most of her days at the Comprehensive Care Center providing meals to residents at the care center.
"I fix the drinks, I put the drinks on the trays, the resident's trays, and put dessert on the trays during breakfast and lunch," Fridrich said.
Her time away from the job has been filled with a new hobby.
"I'll sit down there on my bedroom floor, lay out the blanket, well lay out the two materials on my bedroom floor and then I'll cut, cut, cut, and then I'll tie, tie, tie," Fridrich said.
An activity that she calls therapeutic has resulted in dozens of cozy blankets.
"I've given them to family and friends and church members, and recently I gave them to my co-workers as a raffle," Fridrich said.
Her popular creations flourished following the onset of COVID-19. She says she's made over 70 blankets since the start of the pandemic, picking out material from JoAnn's fabric store.
"Covid came around, the stay at home, I was like, what am I going to do?" Fridrich said, "So I came up with this idea."
An idea that's wrapping people in comfort and boosting morale.
"She bumped it up a notch to give of herself, her time, her money, her efforts, to turn it around to give it to the staff, it was such a loving expression," Lorraine Jones, an administrator at Comprehensive Care Center, said.
Fridrich doesn't expect anything in return in exchange for one of her homemade blankets, except for maybe one thing.
"My kind of payback is the joy on their face that I see," Fridrich said.
That joy, perhaps a reaction knowing these blankets are made from more than just material. As the personalized tag that she puts on each of her blankets reads, "not made perfect but made with love."
