5 minute read
HELP, HEALING AND HOPE
RANGERS DELIVER HELP AND HOPE
IN THE MIDST OF A TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD YEAR, RANGERS PITCHED IN TO DO THE HARD, SOMETIMES RISKY, WORK OF EASING PANDEMIC-CAUSED SUFFERING.
Throughout 2020, students and alumni helped with testing, made masks and served in myriad ways. In December, when vaccines to prevent COVID-19 were approved for widespread use and brought us all a glimmer of hope, Regis students, professors and alumni raised their hands, rolled up their sleeves and got busy. They answered the call to serve and made us proud. Here are just a few of their stories:
Eustacia Bean
To some, Eustacia Bean may be a second-year pharmacy student. But to dozens of seniors in northern Colorado, she’s a hero.
When the first COVID-19 vaccines won emergency approval last winter, Bean had no intention of sitting by while watching others deliver the hope, relief and return to normal life the vaccines promised.
“I really wanted to help. There’s 330 million people who need a vaccine and then they need a booster. I just have a general opinion that those of us who can help really should,” Bean said.
She contacted everyone she could think of — local pharmacies, faculty in the Regis School of Pharmacy — seeking a way to connect syringes to people. As she waited to be dispatched to vaccinate the first eligible group — those 70 and older — she studied videos on how to administer the vaccines.
Eventually, Walgreen’s sent her to a care facility in Fort Collins. Bean, who lives in Erie, Colo., returned to Larimer County often to vaccinate elderly residents. And each time, she found seniors who were apprehensive, and very grateful.
“The elderly have seen more friends and family die than we have,” Bean said. “So, I gave shots to more than one person who sat down and started crying, and said, ‘I’m so happy, so overwhelmed to get this vaccine.’”
Once winter break ended, classes took up much of her time. But Bean is still squeezing in weekend clinics whenever possible. She was notably present delivering vaccines into the arms of Regis community members at a March 22 pop-up clinic. “As long as I’m not failing any classes, I’ll keep doing it,” she said.
Bean, a Marine Corps veteran who grew up in a small, upstate New York town where her family were volunteer firefighters, can’t imagine not pitching in. “I was raised to help.”
— KA
Erin Winterrowd
Long days inside the Denver Coliseum helping women experiencing homelessness find housing, get mental health treatment or remember to take their insulin isn’t exactly the way Erin Winterrowd expected to spend her summer vacation.
But then, hardly anyone spent the summer of 2020 the way they’d expected.
Among the pandemic-created upheaval was the closure of Denver shelters and services for those experiencing homelessness. So, the city provided a 24-hour home, with showers and daily meals, to 300 women and transgender people at the coliseum, which otherwise would have stood empty. The National Western Complex sheltered 600 men.
Most of the women needed more than food and a bed, and that’s where Winterrowd came in. Besides directing Regis’ Women’s and Gender Studies program and serving as associate professor in the psychology and neuroscience department, she’s a volunteer with Spark the Change Colorado, which connects mental health professionals with people in need. Last summer, they put out a call for help meeting the varied and complex needs of women housed in the coliseum, and Winterrowd answered.
Over the summer, she met women who had never been homeless before, and some who had lived on the streets for years. Some had jobs. Others had debilitating mental illness. And many were somewhere in between.
“We had one woman who worked in an Amazon warehouse. She worked nights and got off at 3 a.m.” For safety reasons, residents weren’t allowed to come and go late at night. So, the woman “slept in her car and came inside during the day for meals,” Winterrowd said.
The work required social-work skills as well as clinical skills. And it was exhausting. But, Winterrowd said, at a time when so many felt helpless, “I felt like I was doing something. Like I was helping society.”
— KA
Josh Gallegos
When Pueblo residents drove up to Josh Gallegos to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, their joy was palpable.
“It’s amazing you can make a direct impact and see people so happy and joyous that they’re getting the vaccine,” he said.
A 2013 Regis biochemistry and molecular biology alumnus, Gallegos worked as an environmental health specialist and public information officer at the Pueblo Department of Public Health and Environment, which serves the City and County of Pueblo. Gallegos recently started a new job at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
At the start of the pandemic, Gallegos helped manage the city’s COVID-19 information center. Now, the health department is distributing hundreds of vaccines per day.
When the vaccine rollout began, he put in 10- to 12hour days. But the long hours were worth it. “The thing that makes me the proudest is that I’m making a direct impact with the community.”
Gallegos said Regis prepared him for pandemic’s challenges. “I’m thankful for my time at Regis and the lessons I’ve learned, just understanding that it’s greater than yourself and what you do can make a direct impact,” he said.
Gallegos said he thinks often of all of his classmates who are making an impact during the pandemic. “All my friends at Regis – we went to school together and were taking biochemistry and biology classes,” Gallegos said. “Little did we know that we were going to be in the history books.”
Gallegos knows better days are ahead. “There’s going to come a day we can take that mask off and be able to hug someone again,” Gallegos said. “Every single day that I work out there is another day closer. That’s what keeps me going.”
— SK
