As cases of COVID-19 continue to rise, we have all been asked to make changes.

Don’t go to the beach. Don’t go to school. Don’t even think about a beer with friends in your basement or a holiday dinner with the extended family. Not the directives you’d typically expect from elected officials, but this is life in a pandemic, uncertain and unprecedented. The weeks drag on, life transforms, and countless people are helping Ontarians get by with our new “stay at home” reality. And in most cases, that means they can’t stay at home themselves.

There are the health-care workers who are taking care of the sick and the vulnerable, and countless ordinary heroes making our world function: They stock the grocery store shelves, take care of others, they deal with people’s financial concerns during a crisis. There are couriers who deliver medical supplies to doctors and craft projects to families stuck at home, and public health workers who are tracing the virus from person to person in a bid to stop its spread. In these bewildering times, helpers are everywhere.

These are just a few of their stories.

Felister Mburu, personal support worker, VHA Home HealthCare

Clients pleaded with Felister Mburu at the outset of the pandemic.

Don’t stop coming, they begged. Their families begged, too. They rely on the in-home care she provides, as a personal support worker with 17 years experience.

“I’m like, I’m not going to stop coming,” Mburu says. “This is who I am. I put myself in your shoes. You’re not alone.”

Aspects of Mburu’s job are the same as they were before COVID-19. It’s not new for her to use personal protective equipment and hand sanitizer, or to wash her hands regularly. But to many clients, the virus felt like an insurmountable barrier, a hurdle she may not be willing to clear to get to them. Social distancing is difficult when your job involves feeding, showering, changing or administering medicine to another person. Would Mburu want to get that close, when everyone else is pulling apart?

“For me, it’s a privilege,” she says. “Especially in my field of work. It shows how important we are in giving hope to those who have bigger types of health challenges.”

She sees eight clients a day these days, many of them new to her because other personal support workers have taken time off to focus on child-care needs or out of fear. Mburu screens each client ahead of appointments, wanting to know where the client has been and who he or she has been in contact with since their last interaction. And that added measure goes both ways: she is more than happy to answer the same questions about herself.

“I’m protecting you and you’re protecting me and my family,” the mother of four says. “They understand. They totally understand.”

At appointments, she takes special interest in her client’s preferences. If they like animals, she talks about animals. If their house is filled with pictures of family, she asks about their loved ones. She brings puzzles and games to distract from television, the news or worries about being vulnerable to COVID-19.

“They appreciate me better, more than they used to appreciate me even before.”

One client stands on his balcony every evening at 7:30 and beats on pots and pans as part of a growing salute to health-care workers. His wife told Mburu it was for her.

“He said, ‘This is for Felister. She’s out there. I’m doing it for her.’ I was like, ‘Oh my god,’” she said, her voice breaking. “It really touched me.”

Most personal support workers Mburu talks to, in her capacity as a peer coach who trains and supports new hires, feel confident and proud going to work every day. She is backed by her community, her employer, her colleagues and her clients. They give her hope, too.

“We are heroes,” she said. “Heroes fight and will beat COVID-19. For me, every day I’m a hero. Every time I go out there I’m a hero. A mother is alone and (their family) is not there, they cannot come, I am the one who is coming.”

Robin Hall, Purolator utility courier

As she goes about her deliveries in Burlington and Oakville, Robin Hall looks for the drawings on the sidewalks, the rainbows in the windows, the signs that say, “We love you,” or “Keep going.”

“I love seeing that,” she says. “It brings a smile to your face.”

It never crossed her mind to not work. She has bills to pay, she loves her job and she knows what she does make life easier for others. “I can tell by our increased volumes that people are making us heroes almost whether we want to be or not,” she says. “I don’t feel like it, but I feel like they think that I’m a hero.”

As people stay home, she is busier than ever, and the company and her union have kept her well stocked with gloves, wipes, sanitizer and disinfectant, which she uses every hour on the truck: “I spray myself down, too.”

She has always loved being in control in the big white truck — called “curbsides” in the business. She motivates herself to do so many stops an hour — she thrives on that, along with the physical workout, and the feeling of delivering a much appreciated and awaited parcel. Her children ask her why she is working such long hours, but she sees it as her way to help “minimize the disease by keeping people out of the stores.”

A few weeks ago, one doctor was so grateful for the medical supplies she brought that he gave her a box of gloves, a bottle of disinfectant and a big tin of cookies. “I was so overwhelmed,” she says. “It took me by surprise.”

The job is a little lonely these days: “I don’t get to talk to anyone because we don’t require signatures anymore.” Now it’s mostly eye contact, nods and setting packages 10 feet from the front door. Most people are grateful for those precautions, but a few have grabbed boxes from her hands.

“In the end I just want to be able to come home and leave the virus away so that my four kids and me and my husband are safe,” she says.

She is “thrilled” that people are still shopping – and not just for the essentials. She’s delivered her fair share of shoes, school supplies, crafts and toys. “I’m afraid one day people are going to have no money and then they can’t shop and then I don’t have a job. I know other couriers would be like, ‘Oh, why do you say that?’ But I think it’s so important to keep things moving.”

There are fewer cars on the road, but the people walking on the street smile, nod, and say thank you, even though she’s not delivering to them. When she sees children, she’ll honk her horn in a musical beat to try and get a laugh. “I try to make it fun,” she says. “That’s what kind of keeps me going.”

Kristen Jenkins, BMO Branch Manager

The daily commute from Burlington to Toronto has changed a lot for Kristen Jenkins over the past few weeks. No longer reliant on the Go Train for transportation, she instead cruises through traffic-free streets on her drive into work.

“I didn’t realize how close Toronto actually is to me,” she says.

No one is on the streets or in the stores when she reaches the city, including the temporarily closed BMO Bank of Montreal branch where she usually works at Spadina and Adelaide. But inside the still-open branches she’s supporting, things remain “oddly steady.” Businesses need them, people who are uncomfortable banking online come calling, homes are being sold. Some people have lost their jobs, don’t know when their next paycheque is coming and worry about paying their bills or putting food on the table.

Either from behind Plexiglas shields or on one end of the phone, Jenkins finds herself doing a lot of listening.

“As long as I’m ... really just being a human being in these cases, that’s all they need,” Jenkins says. “They need somebody to understand them.”

Banking is in Jenkins’ blood and she jokes that BMO is the “family business.” Her father is retired from the company, her brother works for BMO in Chicago and her sister also works for BMO in Toronto. But Jenkins is the only one still going into the office day after day. Her loved ones worry, and she can appreciate that, despite the bank’s supply of hand sanitizer and gloves, the social distancing decals on the floor and the branches’ nightly cleanings.

But knowing she can help somebody keeps her going.

“I know there’s so much happening outside,” she says “I’m not a doctor, I’m not a nurse, I can’t help in that way but if I can help ease people’s minds a little bit ... I’m so thrilled that I’m able to make a difference in that way.”

One client Jenkins, a former small business owner herself, speaks to “almost daily” owns a few restaurants in the city. The “best case” scenario for him coming out of all this would be to have to close just one restaurant in order to keep the rest of them going.

“But he’s constantly worried about, ‘Am I going to be able to reopen when all of this is done?’”

Another client has owned a clothing store for more than 40 years. He doesn’t like technology, but hopes to apply for the government’s emergency loan program. That’s where Jenkins comes in. In exchange for her help, her client has dropped of gloves and sanitizer to go with “constant” thank-yous.

“We’re in business with him right now,” she says. “That’s how he feels.”

Those clients keep Jenkins coming into work every day, even as she urges others not to come into the bank if they can avoid it.

“It is kind of an equalizer right now. We’re all on the same level, we’re all in the same place.”

Omar Ozaldin, manager of communicable disease control, Toronto Public Health

Emergency and outbreak management is all part of the job for Omar Ozaldin.

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He wasn’t around for the city’s Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003, but Ozaldin has dealt with swine flu, two major mumps outbreaks and a measles outbreak in his 14 years with Toronto Public Health.

The difference this time, as he and his team work to limit COVID-19’s reach, is the urgency. Ozaldin’s team of public health inspectors and nurses — communicable disease investigators — has grown to 143 people from about 25 as they battle the spread of the virus by identifying individuals who have been infected, collecting data about where they may have been infected and tracing contacts to prevent as many further infections as possible.

A background in science is required to understand the epidemiology of the communicable diseases, but Ozaldin believes there is also an art to the communication aspect of the job. He needs to be able to put people at ease quickly in order to get the information he needs — where they’ve been, who they’ve come in contact with — as soon as possible.

Nothing is as fulfilling for Ozaldin as when he gets to deal with a person directly, like he did with one of the first coronavirus cases in Toronto.

“If you want to have the quick, instant satisfaction, it’s when you are actually on the phone with the client,” he says. Ozaldin is trained to de-escalate emotion in those situations. He gets straight to the point. Information is power: “Yes, you’re worried about their well-being but you want to be very frank and also provide them with the facts.”

Ozaldin has worked alongside most of his colleagues for years, through those other outbreaks. They all have their “eyes on the prize” now, knowing what they’re doing is important and effective, a responsibility they don’t shoulder lightly. They pull for each other, lift each other up when they’re tired. Successes are built upon the team coming together and helping each other — while maintaining social distance, of course.

Some work remotely, which Ozaldin says is being done on “a bigger scale than ever.” In the face of a global pandemic, Ozaldin’s excitement about that “very challenging but also satisfying” shift is palpable.

“We are responding to a public health emergency on an international level and while we are maintaining our operation we’re doing something we haven’t done before,” he says

It is in the rare quiet moments that Ozaldin and his team remember emergency and outbreak management is all part of the job — and will continue to be long after this pandemic.

“We try sometimes, when we have a minute to think about it, to think what is different this time,” he said. “What are we going to remember about it afterwards? We’re almost preparing ourselves. I’m almost starting to think about the next one.”

David DiGirolamo, store manager, Real Canadian Superstore Newmarket

Last week, David DiGirolamo, theof Real Canadian Superstore in Newmarket, received a phone call he won’t forget. It was a member of the East Gwillimbury fire service, asking if the grocery store staff could gather outside in five minutes. It was kind of a drizzly day, but DiGirolamo and his colleagues stood outside their store in the northern edge of the city. Then a small fleet of fire trucks pulled in from Yonge St., lights and sirens blazing.

“They did a little speech thanking us for being the unsung heroes,” he says. “Everyone got out of their trucks and did a little salute.” Few eyes were dry.

The company’s mission has always been to “feed everyone,” and that rings true now more than ever, he says. If you’re a teenager, and you got your first job stocking shelves before this all started, it might have been “difficult” to see your important role in the food chain, he says. But amid the pandemic, the realization comes more naturally.

“People need food. We are the ones that are brave enough to come in and make sure that they get it,” he says.

DiGirolamo has worked with Loblaws for 17 years, and has been the manager in Newmarket for nearly two of them. Before the pandemic, 50 people in line would make him anxious. If there were no bananas, “I would probably break down.” But now, everyone is trying their best, and it’s “all we can do,” he says.

For the most part, people understand, but there is tension. Shoppers who haven’t left home in two weeks are often terrified to venture into public. If a customer is “excited,” he says, staff know they can call him. He lets them know that it’s not personal – it’s fear.

“It’s about how we treat each other now that’s going to keep them coming back,” he says.

Outside, a security guard counts heads to ensure a “comfortable” number of people are shopping. There are pylons and lines so people can wait safely, and inside, there are graphics on the floor, and newly installed Plexiglas shields at the checkouts, which was “a huge boost for morale for our cashiers.”

The pandemic has unified staff into a “surrogate family,” he says. His wife is a nurse, and a lot of staff have high risk family members, so many are isolating themselves at home, so they can keep working. These days, it’s not strange for a card to appear on his desk. One touched him recently: “Louise works at your location, she’s only been there six months. We just want to say thank you for keeping her safe. She’s our mom, she’s our wife and she’s never been more excited to come to work because she just knows what she’s doing is good and she’s very appreciative of all the measures that you guys are taking to keep her safe,” he says. “And that’s from somebody that’s been with us for six months.”

He hopes that people will simply be kind – to each other, and “to us,” he says.

“It’s how we treat each other at this moment that’s going to dictate how we come out of this, so I think just making sure everyone treats each other with respect and is patient.”

Shequita Thompson, senior site manager, Eva’s Initiatives for Homeless Youth

Many of the young people that Shequita Thompson has served at Eva’s Phoenix, a 50-bed transitional home for adolescents experiencing homelessness in downtown Toronto, know about change and going it alone.

So seeing staff members show up for them in the middle of a pandemic, when it would be so easy just to stay home, means a lot.

It is a testament to how deep the relationships between young people and Eva’s staff are, Thompson says. Advocates for Toronto’s homeless population have pleaded for more action in the vulnerable shelter space, but still workers like Thompson trudge on.

“Is it scary? Absolutely. It’s scary for many, many staff who are coming into work daily and feeling those anxieties because as they are supporting (young people) they are supporting family members and child care and navigating those pieces.”

Navigating this pandemic is also hard for the young people, age 16 to 24, that they are supporting. Many of the services that they’ve been building routines around are closed or shut down — community centres, employment support and non-essential jobs.

“This is kind of a shell shock,” Thompson says. “They’re staying in their rooms and they can become closed off and there are mental health concerns that arise during this moment.”

Thompson and her colleagues have had to adapt along with the rest of the world. They hold weekly resident meetings to keep the young people informed, have increased wellness checks and are hosting internal programming that aims to maintain a sense of normalcy for the people in their care.

“These young people, yes they’re anxious but they’re pushing past their anxiety to be able to show up in the way that they’re able to,” Thompson says.

When Thompson looks back on this pandemic six months or a year from now, it won’t be the fear or the anxiety that sticks out. It is how crisis, oftentimes, brings the best of people.

“Really, truly, as a team for me the silver lining is seeing how our staff stepped up to the plate in monumental ways ... seeing our staff work with young people and have conversations around what COVID-19 looks like. For many of our young people they’ve never had conversations like this before.”

And Thompson finds a deep, belly laugh is always calming, too: “Every day we get those moments as a team, to be able to just decompress.”

Eva’s three sites in Toronto continue to rely on monetary donations in order to provide meals and programming for young people on the margins who are not able to go home at the end of the day.

“We’ve been able to support each other through each moment that everyone is going through so everyone gets what they need to feel safe and able to consistently support youth above and beyond the need. I’ve seen that. I’ve truly seen that.”