I’ll take the designer quarantine package, please!
Some lucky New Yorkers who stayed in taxpayer-funded quarantine hotels in the city were gifted designer Coach items as a parting gift for safely completing their quarantine.
Sam Szabo, 32, of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was staying at the Queens’ LaGuardia Plaza Hotel in November when he was handed what appeared to be a $350 Katy Satchel Coach bag on his way out the door after completing his eight-day quarantine.
‘It was very strange,’ Szabo told the New York Post about receiving the luxury item – which is no longer available on the company’s website but can be purchased for a discounted price of $140 on Coach Outlet.
‘At the end of it all, I was given a free Coach purse as a thank you for staying at this quarantine hotel. So, strange experience, but overall, hard to complain about.’
On top of getting a free designer bag, Szabo received his own ‘private room, three meals a day, and really good care from the nurses.’
‘I have to say the whole system is incredibly impressive,’ he told the New York Post.
The hotel also had an array of heels, loafers and other bag options for residents to choose from – all donated by the Coach Foundation as part of a $2 million community-support initiative. Most of the designer products were handed out at quarantine hotels.
An NYC Health + Hospitals spokesperson told the New York Post that the free bags were a part of a recent initiative in March 2021 when the Coach Foundation offered to make a one-time donation of their products to help New Yorkers receiving coronavirus care in the city’s public health system.
Scroll down for video
Sam Szabo, 32, of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, received a Katy Satchel Coach bag (pictured) on his way out the door from his stay at the Queens’ LaGuardia Plaza Hotel in November
The Katy Satchel originally retailed for $350 from the brand, but is only available on its outlet website now, retailing for a discounted price of $140
The 32-year-old performance artist choose to stay in the quarantine hotel – which is offered for all New Yorkers who qualify – after catching the virus to isolate away from his roommate and was pulled aside by staff while waiting for his free taxi home and was informed he’d be receiving the luxury item.
‘They were like, “The taxi driver needs to go, but we do have a parting gift for you if you want to collect it,”‘ he told the New York Post.
‘At this point, I was so tired of being here but [I thought] “Ok, fine, whatever this parting gift is, cool.” So I drop my bags in the taxi, and they lead me over to this table that is just full of Coach purses.’
‘To go from something that’s so liminal – a hotel but with hospital amenities, very spartan, efficient and clean, absolutely no luxury – and then walk out with a purse was a surprise.’
The Coach Foundation paired up with NYC Health + Hospitals, which is in charge of the quarantine hotels, like the Queens’ LaGuardia Plaza Hotel, to offer a one-time donation of luxury goods to give to those receiving city-funded coronavirus aid
He was stayed at the hotel (pictured) for eight days near Thanksgiving to protect his roommate from the virus. He was gifted the bag as a parting gift by the hotel
‘Now, I have this Coach purse. It’s a really good icebreaker story,’ he told the New York Post.
Szabo wasn’t the only guest to receive a bag.
A 34-year-old, who spoke to the New York Post under anonymity, said he, too, received a designer item.
‘As you are leaving, they sort out your laundry, and then they tell you, you have a gift that is coming to you from Coach, which is the funniest thing ever – why would you receive a gift for this whole thing?’ the man said.
‘You take the lift to the lobby, and just as you’re being discharged, there’s a pile of Coach bags behind a retractable rope and you walk up and pick whatever you want and somebody behind the rope hands it to you.
‘It’s a gift already that the city takes care of you to this extent during this crisis, and on top of this, you get rewarded for it,’ he told the newspaper.
The man, who was visiting from California, choose a wallet clutch and gifted it to his brother’s girlfriend. When he got COVID-19 again a few months later and stayed at a different hotel, he did not receive a parting gift.
DailyMail.com has reached out to Coach and Szabo for comment.
At the same hotel, not only did some residents get a free designer bag, but they can bring cigarettes and weed.
Residents are allowed to bring cigarettes and marijuana with them, which has to be handed over to the staff nurse upon arrival.
Patients will be allowed to smoke during their three daily outside breaks. However, alcohol is not permitted inside the residence.
Jonathan Martin, 21, from Astoria, Queens, who stayed at the LaGuardia Plaza Hotel in January, said the staff took his weed and placed it in a plastic bag when he arrived. He was handed it back on his breaks.
Martin, a coffee shop manager, stayed in the hotel for five days until he completed his quarantine. He said he was grateful to be able to bring marijuana with him to help him ‘relax.’
‘It’s nice to relax when I’m stuck in a room… by myself for five days,’ he told the New York Post from outside of the hotel, where he was being monitored by staff on his 15-minute break.
He also said the staff carefully inspected his sealed bottle of pomegranate juice when he arrived to make sure he wasn’t hiding any alcohol in it.
At one point, the city did consider allowing staff to serve serve, finding that guests were refusing the quarantine option when alcohol was off-limits – causing those they lived with to have harmful exposure to the virus.
