In a concrete hangar in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico,
Katrina Mayes is working with precision and purpose. Wisps of smoke surround her, wafting off the dry ice she is using to jerry-rig a cardboard vaccine carrier. Her task: to create a vapor phase vent to moderate the temperature of the cooling container from around minus 80 degrees Celsius (for storing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vials) to minus 15 degrees Celsius (to accommodate supplies of the Moderna vaccine).
At 29, the biochemist and virologist has spent much of her professional life indoors, where the U.S. government has entrusted her to handle some of the world’s most lethal pathogens including Ebola, Lassa fever, and Nipah viruses at top-secret Biosafety Level Four facilities. “I shower six times a day,” she tells me. “I’m the cleanest person you’ll ever meet.” Her winning smile and gallows humor mask the gravity of her work, which has involved diffusing poison-laced letters that have been mailed to federal buildings.
The Progress-Index
Only 10 months apart in age, Dr. Katrina Mayes and Dr. Theresa Graf were in the same grade all through school. Their time at Life University was no different. They took every class together. Their parents even joked that they shared a brain cell. Dr. Kat, of Colonial Heights and Dr. Tess, of Chester also share a love of helping others achieve better health through chiropractic.
Hence, it only seemed fitting that when they finished their education, they would share something else . office space.
They had built up a steady practice - then, last year happened - and it forced the sisters to find a way to reinvent themselves in a pandemic society.