At local hospitals like St. Joseph’s in Syracuse, a hot meal for healthcare workers provides a lot more than just nourishment during the pandemic.

“We can’t give enough emotional support and food is emotional support it’s also calories you need to work and keep doing the good work that you’re doing so it’s awesome,"  said Tim Midgley.

Midgley says. He's a Liverpool native who spent his Friday morning helping deliver meals provided by Kitty Hoynes to St. Joseph's healthcare workers.

Naomi Mehmedovic is one of the nurses who gets the eat those meals.

“When we get that break it just means so much that our community is supporting us this way. The food is always great so we really, really enjoy it,” said Mehmedovic.

Since the start of the Pandemic, nurses like Naomi have enjoyed meals from local restaurants and Midgley is the reason why. When COVID started, Midgley saw an opportunity.

“We saw the opportunity to use our platform for good,” said Midgley. “Connect the dots, which is the restaurants to the frontline workers here and the healthcare workers, take in donations, keep the restaurants busy, keep the frontline workers happy with the emotional support of the food and it just worked out.”

Eight local restaurants have collaborated with DIEMlifeto serve up nearly four thousand meals to workers at St. Joseph’s, Upstate and Community.

“For us we don’t do our jobs to be thanked but it feels so good to be thanked by everybody it makes us feel great to know that have that support and that we are being appreciated for what we do," Mehmedovic says.

For Midgley, wanting to help came natural.

“My mom’s a retired nurse, she worked at Crouse for many years,” said Midgley. “My sisters at Upstate right now so the fact that I can be a part of the connections of sending meals to my sister knowing she got one of those I believe. Whether it’s Upstate, St. Joe’s, Community, I think it’s just a matter (of) the same type of people doing the same good want to connect the pieces and the community obviously showed up.”

So far DIEMlife has raised over $41,000 for COVID relief. If you'd like to contribute, you can visit their website.