Phoenix woman was integral to multimillion-dollar COVID-19 relief effort on Navajo Nation
Corrections & Clarifications: An earlier version of this article misstated the year Vanessa Tullie's mother died.
When Vanessa Tullie noticed food and toilet paper disappearing from grocery store shelves early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, she knew it signaled difficult times ahead.
Not only for her and her children living in Phoenix but for her grandfather and thousands of other elders living on the Navajo Nation, where grocery stores were already few and far between.
"I saw the concern in his eyes and just that sense of like hopelessness," Tullie said, recalling a March 2020 trip to a grocery store in Window Rock with her grandfather. "I told him I can always bring up supplies from Phoenix but that from now on we were going to have to do no contact visits and he understood that."
This prompted Tullie to spring into action when, days after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, former Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch began coordinating efforts to collect food and supplies for Navajo and Hopi families in what would become one of GoFundMe's top five fundraisers of 2020. The Navajo and Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund is now under the umbrella of Utah non-profit Yee Ha’ólníi Doo.
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Tullie shopped from store to store across the Valley for food and supplies she later helped deliver to tribal families in northeastern Arizona.
"Because of her location, Tullie was the primary Phoenix shopper for the Relief Fund which inadvertently transformed her entire dining room and family room into a warehouse for supplies," the organization said in a recent news release.
Realizing both the need for food and supplies was much larger and the relief fund was raising more than she imagined, Tullie established connections with Shamrock Foods to secure a steady stream of supplies in bulk for the organization. She also led online training sessions for volunteers and dedicated a toll-free number to taking requests for supplies.
Between shopping initially and later ordering supplies and coordinating distribution sites, Tullie said she was working at least 60 hours a week on top of running her own business and being a mother to five children — all while pregnant.
Tullie's business Ahehee' Shidine'e Homecare in Phoenix trains staff who provide home care to families across the state with a focus on Navajo and Gila River nations. She started the business, which translates to "thank you, my people," about three years ago in honor of her mother who died from cancer in 2017.
The relief fund since last spring has delivered care packages to more than 400,000 people and personal protective equipment kits to more than 100,000 people across the Navajo and Hopi nations, the organization's interim executive director Branch said in a newsletter in April. They've also distributed nearly 800 handwashing stations to tribal families who don't have access to indoor plumbing or running water, the newsletter said.
As the Navajo Nation's vaccination rate excels and demand for food and supplies slows, Tullie has continued to work with the organization as its lead New Mexico coordinator and board treasurer.
"It was basically my mission and my purpose to help as many as I can and always in the back of my mind were my relatives, especially my grandfather," Tullie said.
"I wanted to make sure I could provide some type of comfort and strength to people with that same hopelessness I saw in my grandfather's eyes at the very start of the pandemic ... and let them know that they are precious, they are loved and that we can survive this. That's what kept me going," she continued.
Reach the reporter at chelsea.curtis@arizonarepublic.com or follow her on Twitter @curtis_chels.
This story is part of the Faces of Arizona series. For years, people in Arizona’s diverse communities have said they don’t see themselves reflected in the newspaper, and that they want to see more good news about their people. These profiles are a step in that direction. Have feedback or ideas on who we should cover? Send them to editor Kaila White at kaila.white@arizonarepublic.com.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Faces of Arizona: Vanessa Tullie key to Navajo, Hopi COVID-19 relief
