Dana Marquez’s eyes scanned across his computer screen Monday morning before he raised his hand.

It was then, during a town-hall style staff meeting for Auburn’s athletics department, that athletics director Allen Greene began posing a handful of questions to those on the call. With sports shut down for the remainder of the semester and the foreseeable future amid the coronavirus outbreak, Greene wanted to figure out ways Auburn’s athletics could help out the community during this unprecedented and dire time.

One of the questions he asked was if anyone on staff knew how to sew. That’s when Marquez, Auburn’s associate athletics director of equipment operations, raised his hand.

“Hey, I can sew,” Marquez said. “I’m not really — I’m busy, but I’m not where I used to be at this point in time.”

Marquez took it as a call to action and began formulating a plan to create surgical masks for the medical community to use and help alleviate some of the stress from supply shortages. He reached out to a close friend of his, Debbie Hillestad, the owner of Stich Therapy in Auburn, and asked if she could lend a hand. Hillestad has been Marquez’s go-to for sewing-related purchases—machines, repairs, threads, needles and the like—for years. This time, though, he had a different request.

Marquez asked Hillestad if she could help him pick out a fabric and a pattern that would be ideal to construct masks out of.

“She jumped in full-bore,” Marquez told AL.com on Friday. “It was pretty awesome.”

Soon enough, Marquez began production of the masks — with the help of his wife, Liz, and daughter, Jordan — with an initial goal of making 100 by the weekend.

It’s a laborious process, but one that Marquez has been glad to be doing. He recruited Jordan to help him sew and do the pleats in the masks, while Liz has been tasked with helping cut strips of fabric for the ties at either end of the masks. The preparation takes more time than the actual sewing, which Marquez said he has down to about 60-90 seconds per mask. As of late Friday afternoon, he finished 75 of the 100 he set out to make

“I need some time off,” he said. “It’s a tedious task. My hands don’t work like they used to when I was 30.”

Sewing guy at it again thank you “Stich Therapy” War Eagle!!! pic.twitter.com/MTX9jdahWd — Auburn Equipment (@AuburnEquip) March 26, 2020

When he was about 30 is when Marquez first learned to sew. He was an assistant equipment manager at Oregon State back then, in the early 2000s, working under Steve “Lightning” McCoy in Beaverton, Ore. One day, McCoy told him he needed to sew numbers onto a jersey — except Marquez, to that point, had no sewing experience to his name.

“I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t know how to do that, Lightning,” Marquez recalled.

Sure enough, McCoy provided him with a crash course on how to work the sewing machine—how to thread it, use the pedal and stitch seams—and by the end of that weekend, Marquez had it down pat.

“I’ve had it in my back pocket ever since,” Marquez said. “It’s obviously grown since then; I didn’t realize how valuable of a tool that would be in the equipment world, but it’s definitely an extremely talented tool.”

It’s a skill Marquez has only grown over the years. The Auburn Equipment Twitter account often refers to him as “Sewing Guy,” and the skill is put to good use often, particularly in the fall while gearing up for football and basketball seasons, when he said he sews almost every day from the start of fall camp on.

“The nice thing is it’s not just me,” Marquez said. “My staff is pretty good at sewing well.”

That includes director of football equipment Brad Rapacz, assistant equipment manager for baseball Brian Maddox and assistant equipment manager for Olympic sports Tra’Cee Tanner, who also helps with basketball, according to Marquez. Just like they do throughout the year with the athletics teams, they’ll be assisting Marquez with this new project during the current athletics shutdown.

Maddox came on board to help create masks on Friday, Marquez said, while Rapacz will join in next week. Once Marquez gets through his initial batch of 100, he plans to call Hillestad again on Monday to see how much more fabric she can provide.

“I think right now we just have a little roll going,” Marquez said. “The goal was to do 100 masks, I think, and then it motivated some other people on the staff to jump in and help out. I think we’re just going to go until they tell us not to go anymore.”

The call to action has provided Marquez with something else to do during an atypically slow time of the year for him and the equipment staff. He’s not as busy as he usually is with spring football canceled and the baseball season discontinued, and outside of sewing together the masks, he has spent much of his time making sure everything is in line for when football does return.

“We’re still trying to stay as on-track as possible and trying to keep busy preparing—like, what happens if our team gets to come back in June?” Marquez said. “Are we prepared for that, since they did leave during spring break, our athletes are gone and we’re making sure that when they come back, we’re not missing a beat so our coaching staff and other teams can come right back in and feel as regular as possible. That’s what we’re doing so far, making sure we’re prepared for it and then, obviously, going into August, what does that look like with the country shutting down piece by piece?”

Marquez has remained in contact with the manufacturers of Auburn’s equipment, checking to see if everything is still on schedule for when football does return. He was in touch with Under Armour on Friday to make sure, logistically, everything was in order. While these are all things Marquez typically does this time of year, he has a little more time to stay on top of the matter now.

The rest of is time is used to work on the medical masks, which will be distributed as needed throughout the area, including at East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika—and wherever else front-line medical professionals may need extra supplies during the COVID-19 crisis.

“We’re trying to help out where we can,” Marquez said. “We helped out the pediatric clinic in Opelika over by EAMC. I’m trying to just disperse where we can and the people that need them. People have found me on Facebook and Instagram and everywhere else, so I’m going to do it and send them to where they need to go, and we’ll try to help out where we can and do the best we can.”

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.