Numbers help tell the story of what happened to the Ortiz family of Fountain Valley when COVID-19 visited their home.
The 13-member Ortiz clan is part of a larger statistic that shows how devastating the pandemic has been on Latinos and other minority populations in California that have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
Three generations live together in a five-bedroom house – seven adults and six children.
They range in age from 63 to 10 months old.
Nearly every one of them, from the oldest to the youngest, came down with symptoms of coronavirus infection in April and May.
All seven of the adults would test positive. Four would be sent to the hospital and all but one of them endured extended stays on ventilators. The others were bedridden at home.
The baby, 5 months at the time, became feverish and kept vomiting. He was never tested, but the family believes he was infected.
Because of illness, quarantine and the economic shutdown, everyone’s jobs were lost or suspended.
Somehow, the family escaped the worst number of all: Nobody died.
Many families like theirs have suffered.
A UCLA report issued in May, as the family reeled from the gut-punch of the pandemic, illustrated the higher coronavirus case rate among Latino, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and African American populations. By July, other statistical analysis showed that Latinos, 39% of California’s population, accounted for an outsized 46% of all coronavirus deaths statewide.
The Ortiz family looks back on their personal chaos and fear as nightmarish. It’s not over yet; some of them still deal with lingering health issues. And there are medical bills on top of medical bills, along with the usual monthly obligations – mortgage, utilities, car payments.
Savings have been depleted.
Mostly, though, the Ortiz family is grateful. To be alive. To have each other.
They give thanks to extended family members who sent money, drove from San Diego and Los Angeles to drop off groceries, and offered to risk their own health to help with the children. They appreciate the additional support of friends, coworkers, their church, the local community and the United Domestic Workers of America (AFSCME Local 3930).
“They were so good to us,” said Holly Ortiz, 40, a teacher at King of Glory Lutheran Church and Preschool in Fountain Valley.
A GoFundMe account created May 10, titled “Covid Family in Fountain Valley — we need help,” has reached $8,335 of a $10,000 goal.
Holly Ortiz speaks on behalf of the family. Until things began to get better in June, she said, “It was just beyond scary.
“It’s what makes us be so super cautious now. And, then, we don’t know if you can get it again.”
‘Domino effect’
On April 20, matriarch Lucinda Ortiz, 60, was the first to get sick. A longtime certified nursing assistant at Huntington Beach Hospital, she would care for a patient who turned out to have COVID-19.
For weeks upon returning home from her hospital shift, Lucinda Ortiz took extra precautions to keep her large family safe. She’d change out of work clothes inside the garage of the family’s two-story house in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood. She’d bag her scrubs, put on a robe and head straight to the shower.
Even the dogs weren’t allowed to approach her until she emerged clean and fresh.
But “Lucy” Ortiz, as her co-workers call her, ended up at the same acute care community hospital that employed her – and on a ventilator.
“It was like a domino effect, one after the other,” Holly Ortiz said of the way COVID-19 spread through the household.
Gerardo Ortiz, 63, would join his wife at the hospital a week later. He had been idled from his full-time job as a plastics mold maker and from teaching a college theology class. His volunteer work as a chaplain also stopped when the Orange County Jail locked down.
Initially, Gerardo Ortiz, with oxygen tubes in his nostrils, could do Zoom calls from his hospital bed. Then he also needed a ventilator to breathe.
Their parents’ illness left Holly Ortiz and sister Ninive Mendoza, to step in as in-home caretakers for their aunt and grown cousin. Olga Campa, in her 50s, and Eric Campa, 35, both suffer from mental illness and have other special needs. They were the next to get sick.
Olga Campa was put on a ventilator at a hospital in Fountain Valley. Emergency room doctors sent Eric Campa, with less severe symptoms, home to quarantine in his room.
Holly Ortiz’s brother-in-law, who does home restoration work, would be hospitalized for a week with COVID-19.
That left Holly Ortiz, who has three children, and her sister, with a 5-month-old son and two other children, alone to keep the household going. They struggled to assist the school children – ages 13 to 9 – with virtual lessons that continued into June.
“That was hard,” Holly Ortiz recalled with an exasperation felt by many parents, but with so much more going on.
“And not even knowing if my mom was dying.”
Long recuperation
The sisters called every day about their parents and aunt, all three unable to communicate. There were long periods spent on hold or waiting to get a call back from busy hospital nurses. But when the sisters did get through, soothing words greeted them.
“Your mom is strong,” the nurses who knew Lucinda Ortiz would tell them. “Don’t worry.”
The nurses also encouraged them to speak to their loved ones while someone at either hospital held the phone. Even if their parents and aunt could not respond, they would hear familiar voices, Holly Ortiz said.
“They just wanted them to fight to keep going.”
Holly Ortiz and her sister wore masks around the house and sanitized as best they could. It did not protect them. Or their children.
Both sisters, first one and then the other, spent days bedridden with intense pain. Mendoza, 34, could not stand up and vomited constantly. As for herself, everything hurt, “even my eyelashes,” Holly Ortiz said.
“Your bones feel like they’ve been crushed; like you’ve been run over.”
The sick baby frightened them most. He wasn’t teething. What else could it be? His pediatrician said to treat him as if he was positive for coronavirus and closely monitor him. It took about a week for him to get better.
By the end of May, life began to settle down. Lucinda Ortiz had come home first; then her husband and sister. They continue to recuperate.
Just this month, Holly Ortiz managed to get through to the overwhelmed California Employment Development Department about drawing unemployment for the couple of months she didn’t work. She resumed her job in August.
“I feel good but I have fear,” she said. “What if I get it again?”
The school-age children are set to return to in-class instruction this week (Sept. 22 and 25). That makes Holly Ortiz nervous.
Neither the World Health Organization nor the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rules out reinfection, although, at this point, documented cases are rare. But lingering side effects can range from headaches to organ damage to mood disorders.
Holly Ortiz’s oldest child, Lexi Delgado, 13, still has not regained her senses of smell or taste. Once she can taste food again, the first favorite treat she hopes to enjoy is funnel cake.
Gerardo Ortiz returned to his job, but Lucinda Ortiz remains unable to work. Both still suffer health issues related to their bout with COVID-19 – high blood pressure, fatigue, joint pain, swollen limbs. They regularly see a cardiologist.
“We’re still struggling, but thank God we’re alive,” Gerardo Ortiz said. “Some people don’t believe how serious this can be. But we know.
“This is real.”