Liz Hunsicker is retired from a nurturing medical profession and now enjoys recycling resources in a way that helps others.

Hunsicker turns stashes of plastic grocery bags into waterproof mats for homeless people around Central Arkansas.

"The mats are supposed to keep the homeless people who have them dry, so they aren't lying on damp ground," says Hunsicker, 72, who retired 10 years ago from the Central Arkansas Veterans Administration Healthcare System. "They're supposed to keep them cool in the summer, as well. We make a long strip that wraps around it so you can kind of roll it up like a sleeping bag and carry it easily.

Since she started about four years ago, she estimates she has made 20-22 mats, spending, from start to finish, anywhere from 12 to 15 hours on each one. Mats are 3 to 4 feet wide and 6-feet long.

"I got started because I like crafts a whole lot, and I love to crochet," she says.

The first step in the process is making "plarn" -- plastic yarn.

"You take a Kroger bag or any kind of plastic bag, spread it and fold it over, like four times, then you cut the ends off, cut the loops off at the top, and cut them into 2-inch-wide strips," says Hunsicker of Sherwood. "They come out to be circles and we interlock them with one another. Finally you have a long line of bags that are loops that have been attached together."

The line of attached bags are rolled into a ball of plarn, used to crochet the mats.

The handles and seams of the bags that are discarded get stuffed into a bag that goes to the recycling center, Hunsicker says.

"I'm also a big proponent of trying to reduce waste in the landfills, so we don't just throw away extra plastic," she says.

Hunsicker is glad to be able to help people in the area where she has lived since sixth grade, when she moved with her family from Oklahoma City. That was just a year before she won an award for her project on pernicious anemia in the Holy Souls Catholic School science fair, which earned her entry into the next level of competition held at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Shortly after walking through the hospital's doors she knew she wanted to be in the medical profession.

"I got to go in and see a lot of the hospital that you normally wouldn't be able to, and I thought I wanted to either be a doctor or a nurse," she says.

After graduating from Mount St. Mary Academy, she went to nursing school. The nurturing part of her career came naturally.

"I had been nurturing since I'm the oldest of six children," she says. "The last two, I can actually remember taking care of them, as far as bathing them, changing diapers, that kind of thing."

Her first nursing job was on the cardiac floor, and then she moved into the operating room.

"You didn't have to work all kinds of crazy shifts in the operating room like you did on the floor, on the ward," she says. "I thought, 'I want to do that because I want my weekends off, except when you're on call.' But I fell in love with the operating room. I found out later that was my passion."

She assisted in orthopaedic surgery before being promoted to nurse educator, teaching new nurses or those who needed continuing education. She was later operating room supervisor at the Veterans Administration and then in that organization's quality management department.

Her husband, Spurg, retired from the Air Force in 1991 and then started a small construction business. They both retired in 2012. They have done some traveling since then, though Hunsicker says she travels more than he does. Her last big trip was to Israel in 2018.

"For my next trip, I'm hoping to go to Ireland," she says.

She and Spurg enjoy streaming documentaries.

"I can crochet while I watch TV," she says.

She started out making mats on her own, delivering them to The Van, Jericho Way and the Friendly Chapel Church of the Nazarene in North Little Rock.

Hunsicker is part of an arts and crafts group at Immaculate Conception Church in North Little Rock and a seniors group at Holy Souls Catholic Church in Little Rock.

"At both places, they started collecting bags," she says.

The women in those two groups wanted to do more, so she taught them to make plarn.

"That's very helpful, because that alone takes a lot of time to prepare," Hunsicker says. "I just did an instructional class for anybody who wanted to help. Now we're planning to get a group together of those who want to learn how to crochet the bags."

Once while delivering mats to Jericho Way, Hunsicker had a chance to hand them directly to people who could use them.

"They were familiar with them, so apparently they had seen them somewhere with others," she says.

That was a rewarding experience, she says.

"But it's just something I can do," she says. "I enjoy crocheting and I have the time to do it."

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