Coronavirus News: Long Island restaurant owners deliver donated meals to healthcare workers overnight

SYOSSET, New York (WABC) -- When Long Island's John Murray discovered that overnight healthcare workers were being overlooked, he wanted to take matters into his own hands and give back to his community.

"My sister-in-law is an overnight nurse at Syosset Hospital and I heard that one morning she had to have an ice cream sandwich for breakfast because there was no food to be had," said Murray. "The idea was at first to feed just her at her hospital and I started thinking if this is a problem at her hospital there's probably problems everywhere. My group 'Feed the Nurses' focuses on feeding the overnight staff nutritious meals."

Feed the Nurses has fed over 15,000 meals to over 20 medical centers and Murray doesn't plan on stopping there. He's managed to partner with another Long Island restaurant owner, Justin Heath, to collaborate and recruit even more volunteers to make these overnight meal deliveries.

"You can tell that they feel when we are dropping things off that they've been forgotten about," said Heath. "We had a couple of people break down and cry for it."

Some of the drop-offs consist of protein shakes, fruit, granola bars, and other non-perishable items.

"A lot of them are shocked," said Murray. "I walked into Southside Hospital when we first started with the yogurt and granola, the nurse at the admitting desk actually started crying. She was saying how people never remember the night shift and I was like 'well we're here to take care of you and we're going to be here as long as we can.'"

All volunteers provide their own transportation to conduct drop-offs and aim to deliver to hospitals by 1 a.m.

"We want to feed everybody," said Murray. "These people are our best shot and only shot against this virus so we got to make sure they are taken care of."

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