At around 9 a.m. on Jan. 15, Yodit Gulelat, the owner of Van Dorn Pharmacy, found herself facing down a growing line of elderly patients eager to get their COVID-19 vaccinations. The pharmacy had just received its first batch of Moderna vaccine doses from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the line outside her door was ballooning.
Gulelat, who immigrated to the U.S. from Ethiopia in 1986, worked non-stop to process the winding line of patients.
“I didn’t see her take a sip of water,” Pamela Norton, director of business development for a local architectural firm who had been at the pharmacy throughout the vaccination process, said.