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Francis Orozco can still remember the faces.

She remembers the endless stream of people who drove up to her testing pod with a look of fear in their eyes asking her if they’ll be OK. Their hands shook as they prepared to self-administer a COVID-19 test.

My son got it, one said.

My grandmother just died from it, said another.

All she could do is assure them that things were going to be OK—but even she didn’t know if that would be true.

In the beginning of the pandemic Orozco conducted COVID-19 tests, but now is a community outreach coordinator within the Long Beach Health and Human Service Department leading the efforts to vaccinate hard-to-reach communities.

The job of working at test sites was one many turned down for fear of being exposed to the virus. But Orozco was unemployed, on the verge of losing her home and had three young kids to feed.

She needed this job.

The pandemic nearly uprooted her family, but it offered her a new calling to help others like her survive the pandemic.

Orozco, 45, was a nanny for a special needs child before the pandemic began. She was paid in cash and would also care for her own 13, 11 and 9-year-old children.

Her husband worked as a forklift driver in Santa Fe Springs.

In March 2020, Orozco lost her job, and her husband was now the only one working. Employees at her husband’s warehouse were laid off, but luckily he was spared.

They couldn’t qualify for financial support programs because of her husband’s immigration status. Benefits weren’t available to an ITIN worker—a tax-paying status the IRS gives to those who are undocumented.

“There was no money coming in from my end,” Orozco said. “I really hit rock bottom.”

In June, Orozco filed a 30-day notice with her landlord to move out of their apartment. She didn’t have a plan for where she and her family were going to go, but Orozco couldn’t keep paying rent on borrowed money from friends and family.

In the middle of a mad scramble to sell most of her belongings before she vacated, Orozco struck up a conversation with her neighbor.

The interaction was rare because the two had never spoken for longer than a few minutes, Orozco said, but her neighbor sensed that something was wrong.

“She said, ‘Hey, it seems like you lost some weight, are you OK?’ And we just started talking,” Orozco said. “I’m going through a lot right now emotionally—financially especially—and that’s when she said, ‘Would you like to come work to do COVID testing?’”

Pandemic response

Orozco’s neighbor worked with the city’s behind-the-scenes pandemic response team called the Public Health Emergency Management bureau.

The team was created in 2005 to respond to bioterrorism and other large-scale disasters.

“You call us when it gets bad,” Sandy Wedgeworth, the emergency response bureau manager, said.

Before the pandemic, the team consisted of about five employees whose greatest challenge at the time was tackling the West Nile virus.

The bureau had built up experience in dealing with a major public health crisis following the Swine Flu outbreak in 2009. The outbreak helped establish protocols for future infectious diseases, but it paled in comparison to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“[Swine Flu] in comparison to COVID, it’s like night and day,” Wedgeworth said. “We didn’t have the same level of hospitalizations and deaths that we saw with COVID.”

Last January, before the lockdowns began, Wedgeworth’s team was analyzing reports about the coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, China, and preparing the city’s medical response.

Wedgeworth’s team had developed blueprints for all of the city’s major testing sites, and later vaccination sites when vaccines became available. Wedgeworth and her team in conjunction with other city departments designed the mass vaccination clinic at the Convention Center.

The influx of federal money for cities to fight the pandemic allowed the emergency response team to hire roughly 200 employees, Wedgeworth said—among that expansion of personnel was Orozco.

Francis Orozco and her husband David stand to the right of their three children outside their home in Signal Hill. Aug. 18, 2021, photo by Sebastian Echeverry.
Working the sites

Orozco applied for the position as a test site worker following the conversation she had with her neighbor. Wedgeworth conducted the job interview.

She warned Orozco that some applicants had turned down the job out of fear of being exposed to the virus.

“Sandy told me that a lot of people were scared to work in that position because they were scared they were going to get COVID, which I’m not going to lie, that was one of my main concerns,” Orozco said. “But I was in survival mode. I needed to work to provide.”

Orozco got the job and was immediately scheduled to work on June 13, her birthday.

“I was praying for a miracle. I remember when I hung up the phone my teeth were hurting from this really big smile that I had,” she said. “I was jumping for joy, especially because she said I start the next day. I’ll have a paycheck in a couple weeks.”

Orozco worked at a testing site at the LBCC Pacific Coast Campus. In the fall, she was moved to the city’s biggest testing site at Veterans Stadium, before the surge of cases in the winter.

She worked full time, Monday through Friday. From November to December, her test site conducted approximately 3,500 tests a day.

“We were really busy,” Orozco said. “I remember almost every question that was asked, their faces and concerns and fears of the community.”

Orozco’s new job allowed her to see the virus up close, and the people who were sick.

“I saw patients that were so bad. I would tell them, ‘Please, go and check yourself into a hospital because you look bad, so they can check your oxygen levels,’” she said.

Some patients returned to the test sites because their results showed an error. Staff at the testing site let them know their results in person.

When the workers told patients they tested positive, some people were too shocked to leave, Orozco said, they just sat in their car. She tried to console them as tears rolled down their face, but she always felt her words were merely a pat on the back.

She didn’t fully understand how devastating the virus could be until she got sick with it herself.

Gaining perspective

Orozco’s not sure if she got sick from working the test sites or from walking through neighborhoods as a vaccine outreach worker.

She was admitted to a hospital in March. Once the shock of being told she tested positive wore off, the faces of the patients she helped rushed to her head.

She began to remember their desperation.

“I know what it feels like now,” Orozco said. “You don’t know if it’s going to be OK, and that’s why people were just crying. Now that I was in that situation I understood.”

Orozco spent five days in the hospital. Her symptoms included severe fatigue. She said standing up made her feel as though she was going to pass out.

It took her two weeks to feel some relief before she returned to the field—this time with a greater sense of compassion.

But Orozco didn’t just connect with people who got sick, her role within the city’s expanding medical team allowed her to better connect with Latino patients.

Orozco is Latina and a fluent Spanish speaker. When she worked the testing sites, she would console nervous Latino families, which she said was the largest demographic that visited her site.

Latinos in Long Beach make nearly 40% of the city’s population. Data shows that the pandemic impacted Latino and Black communities harder than others, one of the reason’s being their status as essential workers.

For some, it’s the status of an immigrant worker, such as her husband.

“Go look at the stores, go see who’s working and who’s afraid to work,” Orozco said.

Orozco has now transitioned from working at testing sites to vaccine education in neighborhoods as the city continues to vaccinate the population.

She and her team walk in Long Beach neighborhoods where vaccination levels remain low.

With the delta variant still lingering in Long Beach, Orozco said she’s seeking a career within the health department to prevent her communities from once again being consumed by COVID.

Orozco still owes some money that she was loaned to pay rent when she lost her job, but her experience as a test site worker and now a vaccine outreach worker has given her a new calling.

“I hold my head high knowing I helped my community,” Orozco said, “because this pandemic almost made me homeless.”