In the “before times,” Maria Cook was known as the friend who could nab in-demand concert tickets. Now, Cook—a mother-of-two and her family’s primary breadwinner—is applying her digital savvy to New Jersey’s complicated Covid-19 vaccine scheduling system, where she makes appointments for seniors in need. “I don’t sleep much,” Cook, 36, tells OprahMag.com. “I’ve been up until 1:30 in the morning for strangers. I need to do this.”
Cook's motivation to help is clear and urgent: Her father, Luis Quesada, died from Covid-19 last October at the age of 70. After months of lockdown in New Jersey, Quesada and Cook’s mother finally decided to move home to their native Costa Rica. Symptoms manifested during his mandated quarantine period. He was gone within a week.
“I see my father in their faces,” Cook says of the senior citizens she now helps. “I want to pay it forward so that nobody has to go through what I go through. It’s horrible.” She adds: “Since I cannot do this for my dad, since I cannot protect him, what better way to do it than protect others? It feels like The Hunger Games. Every man for himself.”
Cook finds seniors through the New Jersey Covid Vaccine Info Facebook page, which has become a central hub for navigating the state's rollout and its hurdles. Many of the page's 64,000 members have been languishing on sites’ waiting lists or haven't been able to schedule online appointments at all. Cook Facetimes with the individuals (“so they know I’m real”), enters their necessary information into an Excel spreadsheet, and loads up sites that work based on their location. Then, she proceeds to refresh sites for hours at a time.
In New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the country, people 65 and over, or under 65 with pre-existing conditions, are eligible to make appointments at a variety of outlets, including hospitals, local clinics, ShopRite, CVS, Rite Aid, and six mega-sites spread throughout the state.
The vast majority of New Jersey’s appointments are found online, with the University Hospital in Newark being one of the state’s few vaccination sites to book exclusively through a call center and email. In January, the state set up a vaccine call center, but its overworked agents are unable to make appointments. That means people are left to navigate a slew of individual websites, with appointment openings dropping at random hours and vanishing quickly. Some sites operate on a waitlist basis, with individuals contacted once their number is up.
“You buy shampoo and vitamins in two clicks, but to get a life-saving vaccine, you need to fill out four pages of forms only to be told...computer says no,” one Facebook user wrote, referencing the common experience of completing the form—only to be informed appointments are gone.
Further confusion was spurred in January, when New Jersey’s official vaccine scheduling system launched. People pre-registered through the state’s online portal, believing that would be sufficient to secure an appointment. In fact, many vaccine centers did not use the NJ’s vaccine scheduling system, and could be scheduled individually.
This system, compounded with a vaccine supply problem that Governor Phil Murphy acknowledged, has led to a sluggish vaccine rollout that, ironically, requires speed to navigate. “It’s survival of the quickest. It’s hard and time consuming. I know some older people who said, 'Forget it, I give up. I'll just wait,” Kate Plessing-Brunetto, who has made 42 appointments for people in her parents’ social circle, says. Plessing-Brunetto’s trick is downloading an auto-refresher and sitting in front of her browser for hours each evening.
After visiting countless websites, Eileen Halsh, 65, and her husband had given up until they were connected via a mutual friend with Plessing-Brunetto. 15 minutes later, Plessing-Brunetto had set the Halshes up with appointments and resources. “I was in shock. I thought, ‘This is an angel you’re meeting along your path,’” Halsh says.
Cook and Plessing-Brunetto have mastered the appointment-making skills that the New Jersey Covid Vaccine Info Facebook group’s members have gathered to teach each other. The feed is populated by exclamation-filled announcements of appointment availability, helpful tips (like setting alerts for Twitter bots that notify you when appointments are up for grabs), and triumphant selfies from the vaccine line.
Some people simply use the group to vent their frustration: After making it through a pandemic year, they're unable to cross the finish line simply because they can’t refresh pages fast enough. Many of the people who need the vaccines the most are often the ones who are unable to procure them.
“If the priority group was seniors, and not every senior has internet access, or a computer or the skills, why are appointments almost all online? Why not one simple form and then someone will call you? Why does it have to be like this where you are fighting?” Plessing-Brunetto asks.
The Facebook community offers relief. “If you look at the comments of posts where someone is frustrated, it’s a lot of people saying, ‘Private message me. I’ll help you,’” says Brandi Prell, 27, who formed the Facebook group with her sister Brittany Prell Cohen, 33.
The sisters, both educators for the deaf and hard of hearing, were inspired to create the Facebook group after booking their grandmother in Florida an appointment thanks to information gleaned from another vaccine-focused Facebook page. After, Cohen received calls from her grandmothers’ friends asking for help. “There was a need—all these older people had no idea where to go,” Cohen recalls. She realized the problem would be similar in New Jersey, where she lives. “I said, ‘Brandi, we need to start this in New Jersey. It's going to be impossible once things open up here.’ So that's what we did.”
Her prediction was right: Soon after forming, the group exploded in size. The sisters and a cadre of moderators now spend their days connecting people with information. And in some cases, connecting people with actual vaccines. "It restores your faith in humanity," Plessing-Brunetto says of the kindness demonstrated in the New Jersey Covid Vaccine Info Facebook group.
Cook is hardly the only person reaching out to strangers. “I had an 83-year-old woman reach out to me yesterday, sharp as a bull. She called me and said, ‘I cannot begin to thank you,’” Julie Kurzrok, a member of the Facebook group and an attorney and mother-of-two, says. Since she started making appointments for strangers, she’s received handwritten cards and homemade cakes from grateful seniors. “It’s completely unnecessary. This work is so rewarding.”
Even after making 80 appointments, Kurzrok, 42, still likens the ordeal to a video game. “The whole process, from appointment to confirmation, has my blood pumping,” Kurzrok says. "Seeing an appointment pop up is not sufficient to know you got it. It’s a challenge between seeing it and securing it,” she says. “It’s become a game to me,” adds Stacey Saposnik, who is also balancing motherhood and a full-time job. “You should see me in the evenings. I’m stationed up with my laptop open, bookmarked to all the sites I’ve had success in. My husband thinks I’m out of my mind.”
Kurzrok and Saposnik are now self-professed “vaccine matchmakers,” connecting seniors in New Jersey with appointments through WGIRLS, a non-profit helping underprivileged women founded by Amy Heller. Heller recruited volunteers through the New Jersey Covid Vaccine Info Facebook group, tapping people like Saposnik and Kurzrok who were already lending their services to those in need. All of the matchmakers are women and many of them are working mothers like herself.
“You'd think it would be people who don't have much going on. It’s actually people with children and jobs who are doing this. We're determined to make this easier for the most vulnerable people in our community—we’re talking about people in our backyard,” she says.
A management consultant and volunteer coordinator, Heller decided to build a more formal system to connect volunteers with people in need after she spent a weekend helping a 96-year-old woman she met on the New Jersey Covid Vaccine Info Facebook group in February. Now, instead of posting on the group, people can fill out a form on the WGIRLS website. “The system is not set up for seniors. They want to be independent and they are. But at 96, do you want to be following 15 sites and learning tricks like putting in zeros for your social security number? No,” Heller says. “There has to be a better way to do this.”
Now, Heller has 200 volunteers working on 2,000 requests (and counting). WGIRLS booked 525 appointments in the initiative's first five days, and is on track to book 1,000 by the end of February.
“These people are literally housebound. Securing them a vaccine will give them their freedom back. And give them hope,” Heller says. One 85-year-old woman with pre-existing conditions wrote to Heller to thank her organization. “I am so relieved mentally, the stress and frustration are debilitating. I can breathe," she wrote.
Heller is planning to expand the volunteer outreach to urban communities in New Jersey that have been hard hit by the virus. The state’s four largest cities, Newark, Jersey City, Paterson and Elizabeth, saw the greatest number of excess deaths in 2020. “We’re pivoting to more vulnerable populations, vaccine adverse populations,” she says.
Reflecting on the outpouring of volunteer support, Heller is reminded of her annual prom dress donation drive, WGIRLS's most popular charity event. Just as everyone has prom memories, everyone (unfortunately) has Covid memories. “You know the fear that you've harbored for your loved ones and your family? The ability to take that away for someone else is really fulfilling,” she says. For people seeking to help in their community, Heller recommends connecting with local senior centers, looking out on social media for volunteer groups to join, and checking on neighbors.
There isn’t a single person in the New Jersey Covid Vaccine Info Facebook group that hasn’t, somehow, been touched by the virus. For Prell Cohen, whose 90-year-old grandma survived the coronavius last March, the collective experience inspires altruism. “I can relate that story to the 98-year-old woman that posted the other day saying she needs a vaccine. I don’t want her family to go through something tragic,” she says.
Some, like Cook, have experienced tragedy, and continue anyway. “I think my dad would be so proud,” she says of her work. “My dad was a fantastic person.” Above all, the volunteers are most motivated by the return of reunions and independence after a year of social isolation.
Saposnik thinks of the man she assisted recently who thanked her on behalf of his seven grandchildren. “I believe I'm giving these people an opportunity to live their lives again."
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