When reporter Ann Dornfeld went to Target in West Seattle on Saturday morning to buy toilet paper, she was shocked to see rows of N95 protective masks for sale -- $6.79 for two.

“Why are women hunched over sewing machines all over the country so Target can sell masks to people who neither need them nor know how to use them properly?” Dornfeld asked her colleagues in an online newsroom chat.

Dornfeld, who reports for KUOW, knew that N95 masks are being rationed at area hospitals, and that health providers are washing them with bleach between patients. Hospitals are all but begging people to turn over masks they may have sitting idly in pantries and garages, left over from paint projects or when Seattle was engulfed with wildfire smoke.

Hospitals are also turning to community seamstresses to make N95 masks out of materials the hospitals have supplied. Dornfeld’s mother is among those seamstresses, ready to start sewing masks for Providence in Renton.

Another KUOW reporter, Ashley Hiruko, called the Target store for answers. “Honestly, logistically speaking, they just show up on a truck from the distribution center,” said a worker named Brian. He said he didn’t know where the masks came from.

Dornfeld returned to her car with toilet paper, but was so disturbed she decided to go back in and take a photo. She posted the photo to Twitter and drove home.

Seeing Dornfeld’s tweet, Lindsey Grad, a lobbyist for SEIU Healthcare 1199 NW, and therefore painfully aware of the shortages, bee-lined to the Target for a one-woman sit-in.