One of the thousands of people volunteering to help get people vaccinated against COVID-19 is a 76-year-old nurse in Monterey County, who is doing work similar to what her mother did during the last pandemic.
Sigrid Stokes described herself as one of two "jabbers" at a mass vaccination clinic in Monterey County.
“My big secret is I do a good pinch and I ask them a question about their grandkids and while they’re sort of thinking about that, you tap it in and half the time they don’t even feel it,” Stokes told KCBS Radio. “So, that’s the trick.”
She learned that trick from her mother, who was also a nurse, and who also helped out during the last pandemic.
Kristine Berg Mueller was 14 when the Spanish Flu struck Norway in 1918.
“She [wasn’t] a nurse then, but she did, I’m sure, whatever she could do to help out – cleaning people and changing beds and doing whatever she could do,” Stokes said. “And, she realized she really enjoyed that kind of work and helping people, and she wanted to become a nurse. She decided at that time.”
Mueller later immigrated to San Francisco to go to nursing school.
She died in 1995 at the age of 91, but Stokes said she now wears earrings made from her mother's Norwegian necklace, as a reminder to herself and others that this pandemic - like the last one - will eventually end.
“We’re all sick of this, we all want it to be over, but it’s kind of a whirl,” she said. “We just have to keep going, the end is in sight, and then we’ll get to the end and things will resume a more normal life. Keep going, we’re going to get there. We’re going to get there.”
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