REAL COOL STORIES - 2/6/21
After reading a story in the San Diego Union Tribune last weekend about “vaccine hunters”, I left the story out for my wife to read. She said, “We should do that some night”. On this past Wednesday around 2 pm, she stated, “Let’s go to Petco tonight.”
We drove downtown to the super vaccination site in the “Tailgate Parking Lot” near Petco Park. The site has been processing around 5,000 vaccinations a day the past few weeks. You must have an appointment which begin at 7am and end at 7 pm. After the last person is processed, if vaccinations are available, they are given to anyone in the line based on age. More on that in a bit.
We arrived WAY too early (around 615 pm). We stood in a line that really didn’t matter, but we were just lemmings like the others just outside the parking lot. We spoke with a couple that had been there the last three nights. There were 61 years old and just missed one day. While hanging out, we also watched the processing of the cars thru the drive thru vaccination center. It was amazing. The streets were crowded until around 710 pm and then it looked like a spigot had been turned off. Now the streets were empty. We waited and waited some more. Around 825 pm, a gentleman with a bullhorn and two nurses arrived with news that there were indeed extra vaccines. They asked the crowd to gather around (social distancing of course). He started at 80 years old. Quickly he went through the 70s, still no one raised a hand. Down to 66 until a woman called out “yes!”. There was a huge cheer by the crowd. They soon got down to 59 and my wife said, “GO!”. As I entered the gate, I heard 58 and then knew my wife would get the vaccine too.
The process went quickly through registration and the actual shot. We needed to wait 15 minutes before leaving the site to make sure there was not a severe reaction to the vaccine.
We still made it home by 930 pm. I am so grateful for the men and women working at the Petco site. Everything was handled quickly and efficiently. It has been a while since I was involved in something with such a sense of community.
We both had some arms for a couple of days and my wife had a slight headache for 36 hours or so. Not bad at all. We scheduled our second dose shot for 4 weeks. Looking forward to it!
For us, a real, cool story!