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MECCA, Calif. — Dust swirled in the air as Luz Gallegos parked her SUV on the side of a dirt road. She had just learned that her aunt died of covid-19 — the third family member to succumb to the disease in only two weeks.
She stepped out of her car at about 11:30 a.m. onto a bell pepper farm in this agricultural community in the Coachella Valley, a little northwest of the Salton Sea.
Gallegos, a daughter of farmworkers who had worked in the fields herself, had only 15 minutes to make what she considered a life-or-death pitch to roughly 20 workers who had just finished a break.
The farm had already seen two workers fall ill to covid.
“We’re losing people in our community each day,” she said.
“I’m very grateful that this group came out here to give us information about the virus and vaccine,” says farm manager Juan Castillo (not shown). “As farmworkers we sometimes go from home to work and back and don’t have time to listen to the news.”
This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.
Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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This story can be republished for free (details).
by
Heidi de Marco, Kaiser Health News
Kaiser Health News
Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
