'Somebody Had to Do It': The Motorcyclists Delivering Lifesaving Supplies to the Bay Area

It all started with a photo.

“[There was] this chick in her black leathers at night on a motorcycle with a mask on, and she was delivering PPE in New York,” says Lucy Carrera, a motorcycle mechanic who lives in Daly City. The photo appeared in a March article on Vice titled “Motorcyclists Like Me Are Delivering Protective Gear to ER Doctors.”

“And I was like, that is what I want to be doing," Carrera says. "And maybe somebody else wants to do it, too.”

Carrera has been a part of the San Francisco motorcycle collective, Dames Don’t Care, for about six years. Established in 2010, the group is open to all genders and levels of riders. Members go on monthly rides and help organize community events and charity fundraisers.

Two days after reading the Vice article, Carrera posted on the group's Facebook page, asking if anyone would be interested in delivering medical supplies in the Bay Area by motorcycle.

Within hours, 20 volunteers had signed up and it grew from there.

“I was floored,” Carrera says. “So many people so fast wanted to do so much stuff to serve their own needs and to serve everybody else's needs. ... It was so uplifting. It was so inspiring.”

At first, there was a “healthy debate about staying the fuck home versus getting out and helping,” she adds.

Somebody had to do it. She and other riders were concerned not only about the risk of directly interacting with people, but also about the medical resources they would be diverting if they got into an accident in the delivery process and needed to go to the hospital.

Ultimately though, everyone decided that the cause outweighed the risks.

“There was a scary lack of medical equipment. And people were making it,” Carrera says. “And it had to be delivered. Somebody had to do it. And here we are all geared up, practically wearing PPE [personal protective equipment] anyway. It just made sense.”

From there, Dames Do Care delivery was born.

Partnering with local groups like Make Me PPE Bay Area, Carrera and a team of volunteers began working nearly 12-hour days connecting people who were sewing (or sometimes 3D-printing) face masks with hospitals, clinics and other institutions in need of PPE. To date, the group has delivered more than 20,000 masks throughout the Bay Area.

For most deliveries, riders stuff their backpacks with the sanitized supplies. But some situations force them to get creative — like when they got a request to deliver an entire sewing machine to someone making masks.

“That's part of the fun,” Carrera laughs. “We don't want you to tell us if we can set it on the bike because we all think we can carry, you know, half of our house on the bike.”

Dames Don’t Care founder Emily Wakeman is one of the riders who has helped Dames Do Care complete more than 400 deliveries since March. She says she’s had several “tear jerk moments,” including when the entire staff of a nursing home ran out to say thank you when she dropped off masks. She also met a man who told her that the group saved him local shipping costs, allowing him to ship the medical supplies to New York and Detroit.

“And I was like, oh my God, you know, at that point we’re affecting multiple cities. That’s amazing,” Wakeman says.

And it wasn’t just the health workers who were feeling grateful. “I think motorcyclists that were riding with us got so much out of it, personally,” Wakeman says.

Volunteer riders proudly post photos of their loaded-up bikes on the Dames Do Care Facebook page, giving thumbs up in thick motorcycle gloves, their faces scrunched but beaming under helmets and masks.

“Everyone initially was really excited both to have a good reason to ride, and it made us all feel good to ... be able to be doing something other than just sitting around watching this all unfold out of control,” Carrera says.

At its peak, Dames was organizing up to 15 deliveries a day throughout the Bay Area. This has since slowed down, which Carrera thinks has something to do with decreasing PPE production and many volunteers returning to work — including her.

Although the effort started with COVID-19, Wakeman says she wants to keep the momentum of volunteer riding going long after shelter in place is over (whenever that may be.)

“I'm looking at getting a 501(c)(3) [nonprofit status] and kind of doing it a little more legit,” she says. “I would really like to continue the Dames Do Care doing awesome stuff for the Bay Area community.”