A Day In The Life Of A COVID-19 Vaccine Site Volunteer

PHOENIX, AZ — I arrived at the COVID-19 mass-vaccination site at Glendale's State Farm Stadium at 1 p.m. on Sunday with no idea what would unfold over the next eight hours.

My task that day, according to the one-page memo I received from the volunteer site I registered through, would be to help as many Arizonans as possible get their COVID-19 vaccines.

That much I knew. What I didn't know at the time was how much I'd learn, both about how much I had missed actual in-person socializing and about the connections that binds all of us together as humans.

My assignment on what would turn out to be a picture-perfect Sunday in Glendale was to grab an iPad and sign in as many vaccine recipients as possible.

The task, while simple on paper, meant that I'd have to chat with everyone that came through the line, which has become a more daunting task given what we know about how the virus spreads.

After a few tips from the trio of volunteers on how to quickly register vaccine recipients on the tablet I was given, I was off and running.

I did my best to make small talk with everyone that passed through, even if it meant throwing out a few one-liners to try to lighten the mood.

What stood out to me almost immediately was how jovial the people I dealt with were, passing out 'thank yous' to myself and the two women that I was assigned to work with in our lane.

It was quite humbling to have complete strangers earnestly thank me for doing something that seemed so simple.

I felt that those like my supervisor — a man named Marcus who's working on his second bachelor's in pre-med at ASU — deserved the real thank yous from the peanut gallery, to be honest.

Folks like Marcus have shown up for eight-hour shifts at State Farm Stadium and Phoenix Municipal Stadium, making sure the well-oiled vaccination machine never misses a beat.

I came away from my eight hours in Glendale being immensely impressed by how streamlined the process was and how refreshing it was to feel upbeat about something relating to a virus that's killed over half a million Americans in a year.

By the time my 2-10 p.m. shift started to wind down, long after the sun had packed it in for the day, I started to feel optimistic about the future for the first time in a long, long time.

My optimism was twofold: for I knew that I would receive my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine at shift's end, and also because I was able to do what I love most, which is shoot the breeze with strangers.

My fellow volunteers were incredible. I met a pair of young men that manned the lane next to ours, one of whom worked for Intel and the other a 21st century nomad of sorts that had lived in New York City and the Bay Area, before returning home to Phoenix once the pandemic took hold.

One of the volunteers in my lane was a claims adjuster who regaled me of her time working in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast.

The other was a recent ASU grad who originally hailed from Colorado Springs and talked about how much the vaccine meant to her, having seen her senior year of college cut short of anything approaching normalcy.

All of these people reminded me how interwoven we all are and made me feel proud to sport an undersized, highlighter-yellow vest for eight hours in the parking lot of a football stadium.

I had to resist the temptation to shed a tear or two when I finally got the jab in my left arm, accompanied by my roughly 3 x 2.5-inch card, just after 10:15 p.m. on Sunday.

As I pulled away from the site just after 10:30, I took a moment or two to gather in all the events that I'd missed in a calendar year.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I exhaled a sigh of relief as the glimmer of normalcy flashed through my mind.

It's a sensation that myself and some 1.6 million Arizonans have experienced, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services' COVID-19 dashboard.

Above all, it's a glimmer of hope in a year full of bad news, which is something we could all use a little more of in the years ahead.