Schulenburg Native Donates 50,000 Face Masks to Fayette Co.

Schulenburg native and international businessman Carman Kobza donated nearly 50,000 face masks to first responders, nursing homes and other agencies that need them throughout Fayette County and the surrounding area last week.

Kobza is co-founder and owner of CK1 Global Partners, a firm aimed at developing for-profit social impact businesses. A few years ago, Kobza started a mobile breast cancer screening service for rural India. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, Kobza has pivoted his business toward providing personal protective equipment.

Kobza lives in Dusseldorf, Germany. His uncle Clinton Guentert and old friend Jeff Cernosek made surprise visits to drop off the masks last week.

“It was in the works for a while but we finally got them to where they deserve to be,” Kobza said in an email to the Record last Friday. “Great support and especially for the surprise deliveries by Jeff Cernosek and my uncle Clinton Guentert. What an outstanding week it’s been.”

“This has been one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever been a part of,” Cernosek told the Record last Friday. “The look on people’s faces at some of these places when we showed up with the masks, it was incredible.”

Cernosek and Guentert delivered masks to all of the nursing homes in Fayette County, the city governments of La Grange, Schulenburg, Flatonia, Moulton and Weimar, and Fayette County Office of Emergency Management. Cernosek estimated that he and Guentert delivered between 45,000 and 50,000 masks locally.

“Carman has connections to manufacturing in China and a distribution center in Dallas,” Cernosek said.

Kobza launched the face mask initiative in response to the severe shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) created by the coronavirus pandemic worldwide. Cernosek said that when the initial order of 100,000 masks arrived in the U.S., Kobza decided to give away nearly half of them to people at the front line of the crisis in the community where he grew up.

Cernosek said several thousand masks were also sent out as free samples to potential future clients such as hospitals in other parts of Texas and New Mexico. Cernosek said the company faces some cost challenges involving shipping a lightweight item like face masks overseas. He said the first shipment actually came by air.

Despite the challenges, the potential for growth is enormous. Just google “PPE shortage.” Some businesses are using so many PPE items, especially masks, that they are starting to add a COVID-19 surcharge to customers’ bills to cover the cost.

But as Kobza’s generous donation to the community shows, profit is not the only objective.

Kobza told the Record that he recently learned one of his elderly family members was expected to succumb to the virus “any day now.”

“Maybe these masks can save one person and one family from having to be impacted,” he said.