A10
OFF PAGE ONE
East Oregonian
Saturday, October 9, 2021
Chaplain:
Continued from Page A1
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
A line of roughly 100 cars Jan. 28, 2021, snakes through the Pendleton Convention Center parking lot as Umatilla County began vaccinating educators with
a drive-thru clinic. The deadline for teachers, health care workers and others to get vaccinations or show proof of exemptions is Oct. 18.
Teachers:
Continued from Page A1
When it comes to eval-
uating religious exemption
requests, the district can go
as far as ask employees for
religious materials or a state-
ment from a religious leader
to explain why they need
an exemption. While the
district has sometimes asked
staff to clarify their request,
Fritsch said the district
hasn’t tried to determine
what is and isn’t a sincerely
held religious belief.
“We didn’t go in-depth,”
he said. “We didn’t question
that.”
Unvaccinated staff that
have an exemption not only
are still required to wear
a mask while working at
school, but will need to
wear a district-issued KN-95
mask instead of a mask
brought from home. Fritsch
said the district will not
require unvaccinated staff
to get tested every week.
While the district’s Oct. 5
report didn’t include school
volunteers, the state also
requires they get vaccinated.
Unlike paid staff, Fritsch
said they will not be granted
any exemptions to getting
the vaccine.
Ultimately, three staff —
one certifi ed and two classi-
fi ed — chose to resign rather
than get vaccinated. In the
most recent case, Fritsch said
the employee tried to secure
a medical exemption, but
when their doctor wouldn’t
sign off on it, they submit-
ted their resignation instead.
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
Doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine await injection Jan. 28, 2021, during a COVID-19 vac-
cination clinic for educators at the Pendleton Convention Center. The Pendleton School Dis-
trict on Tuesday, Oct. 5, reported 87.5% of district employees are fully vaccinated or will be
by Oct. 18, the deadline Gov. Kate Brown set for educators, health care workers and others to
get vaccinated or get exemptions.
COPES
LOCATIONS
AND HOURS
OF OPERATION
Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian
The new Oregon Washington Health Network COPES – Community Outreach Prevention Engagement Services – clinic in
Pendleton is one of three new clinics in the county to off er support and guidance from peers.
Centers:
Continued from Page A1
Bernard credited his
recovery to Narcotics Anon-
ymous, The Powerhouse
Residential Drug Treatment
Center in Hermiston and
those who helped him work
through the personal roots of
his addiction.
Bernard said it’s his expe-
riences with overcoming
homelessness, jail and addic-
tion that help him in relating
to his clients and working
with them. He said many
of the things he has now – a
wife, children and a home
– he never would have been
able to envision for himself.
“All of those things that I
thought were going to be out
of reach, all of those things I
got the chance to experience,”
he said of his life now.
Amy Ashton-Williams,
Oregon Washington Health
Network’s executive direc-
tor, was present at the Herm-
iston grand opening, which
also included Hermiston city
offi cials, OWhN employees
and interested health care
workers.
“I think this is monumen-
tal,” Ashton-Williams said,
also explaining the centers
will be able to offer help,
untied to treatment. Services
are free, and a good place for
people who are troubled and
unaware of what to do next.
Ashton-Williams said the
organization have helped
around 50 people in the past
few months. The offi ces, with
more peers, she said, will
be able to serve even more
people.
Hermiston City Council-
ors Jackie Myers and Doug
Primmer joined Ashton-Wil-
liams for the ribbon cutting.
“We are very excited for
this,” Myers said. “This abso-
lutely fi lls a need that Herm-
iston has far gone without.
Having someone here for
those in need and their fami-
lies is a great service.”
Primmer added, based on
his experience in law enforce-
ment, he has seen the damage
drugs have had on people’s
lives.
“Having access to this
type of thing, this network, is
going to help us out,” he said,
because the centers provide
police a resource to direct
people to.
Stanfield resident Luis
Ibarra is the peer mentor
supervisor for all three
centers and oversees local
operations. He trains peers
and makes sure clients have
a positive experience.
As the child of an alco-
holic, he said he has a strong
feeling for his work. He
witnessed domestic violence
in his home and abuse. This
made him angry and bitter,
leading to rebellion and drop-
ping out of high school.
Even when his home life
improved, he said he still had
anger issues in need of reha-
bilitation. Now, he intends to
help other people with similar
problems.
Megan Torres, another
peer supervisor, also is work-
ing with the centers, going
from one to the other, as well
as local hospitals. She will
direct people with substance
use disorder to the peer centers.
She said she is happy with
the new centers and grateful
for the opportunity to work
with OWhN, as she is trying
to reduce emergency depart-
ment visits by redirecting
people to the peer centers,
where they are more prop-
erly served.
Shannon Carslay, recov-
ery mentor, works out of the
Pendleton center. In the past
month, working in Pendle-
ton, he has been able to help
people by relating to addicted
individuals. By sharing his
own story, he gets them to
open up about their situa-
tions. Then, he fi nds help for
them.
“I’ve been through a lot
of what our clients have
been through,” he said. And
he off ers emotional support,
while also directing clients to
medical, psychological and
even fi nancial aid.
Valentin Palomares,
recovery mentor, is working
out of the Milton-Freewater
center. He has spent the past
month in training, studying
to become certifi ed and then
shadowing other mentors.
“I’m really excited about
this,” Palomares said. “I,
myself, have not only dealt
with drug and alcohol, but
with other issues.”
He said he thinks people
like him have been neglected,
“not by the city, but by the
culture.” He said Hispanic
people fi nd it diffi cult to ask
for help and he hopes, as a
Hispanic man, he can bring
services to others without
compromising their place in
their culture.
Another peer mentor,
Mariah Wright, also shares
her experiences to help other
struggling addicts. She said
she is a recovering addict
and has been “in and out of
addiction for 10 years.” She
was homeless for fi ve years.
For three of those years,
she was homeless with her
daughter.
“It was really hard,” she
said. “For the longest time, I
couldn’t put anything before
the drugs. I always put the
drugs fi rst. So I understand
the trouble; I understand how
hard the drugs can be.”
Wright went to prison,
and that is where she
changed her life. Released
from prison, she is now
The Hermiston center
is at 165 S.W. Third St.,
Hermiston. The Pendle-
ton center is at 200 S.E.
Hailey Ave., Suite 105/106,
Pendleton.
The Milton-Freewater
center is at 410 N. Main
St., Milton-Freewater.
The hours of opera-
tion for the Hermiston
and Milton-Freewater
centers are Monday to
Thursday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The Pendleton center is
open Monday to Friday, 8
a.m. to 5 p.m. People may
walk in and receive help
during these hours for
free and without notice.
Once the centers become
more established, hours
will be extended, manag-
ers said.
dedicated to helping others
in Umatilla County.
“This is a passion for me,”
she said. “I want people to get
the experience with recovery
that I have.”
She is the niece of East
Oregonian news editor Phil
Wright.
Kori Hibbard, a home
visiting nurse with the
Umatilla County Nurse-Fam-
ily Partnership program, also
attended the event.
“I feel this is going to be a
great resource for the clients
I serve,” she said. “I serve
first-time moms and their
babies, and I’m with them
until their baby turns two.
Some of my moms struggle
with addiction and have a
history of addiction.”
———
East Oregonian reporter
Ben Lonergan contributed to
this feature.
She listens in the hallways
and at the nurses stations as
the staff relate the stress of
their job. She said health care
workers can often be reluctant
to seek help themselves, so
she enjoys fi nding them and
giving them an opportunity
to talk, even if all they utter
are sarcastic remarks:
“I had one girl tell me, ‘It’s
going to suck for a while, and
then it’s going to get better,’”
she said. “It’s an acknowl-
edgement that we’re just
working through this and
doing the best we can do, one
patient at a time, one day at
a time.”
She called her job a privi-
lege, but one that comes with
responsibility.
“The notion of saying
something wrong and making
something worse is terrify-
ing,” she said. “But it is an
incredible privilege to help
bring a bit of balance and
healing into their life.”
She joined the hospital as
an on-call chaplain in 2019. A
math teacher at Blue Moun-
tain Community College, she
felt compelled to help health
care workers through their
day-to-day work while hear-
ing stories from her husband,
an emergency department
nurse at St. Anthony. Now,
she works evenings and
weekends.
“I’m not somebody who
likes to be bored,” she said.
Throughout the pandemic,
she has stood by as infection
has ebbed and fl owed. She has
listened to health care work-
ers whose patients improve
and decline over weeks of
treatment, and always in
isolation, away from their
families.
She told of a nurse whose
patient had to go on comfort
care, a stage where a nurse
helps soothe a patient at the
end of their life. The nurse
had given the last dose of
medication, and she came to
Hardin struggling to cope.
“She had almost felt like
she had killed the patient,”
she said. “So I suggested to
her that, rather than think of it
that way, she should think of
it as giving the gift of a peace-
ful passing.”
And over the past two
months, the staff have
only grown more tired and
anxious, she said.
“The energy level has
dropped,” she said. “People
are tired. They’re feeling
stressed and there’s a lot of
worry right now because of
impending staff losses and
no impending decrease in
patients.”
The hospital, already short
staff ed, could lose many of its
workers in the coming weeks
when the state’s vaccine
mandate goes into effect,
forcing health care workers to
get the shot or lose their jobs.
That impending reality has
sown a new kind of division,
Hardin said, between unvac-
cinated employees worried
about fi nding new work and
vaccinated employees fearing
what work will be like with-
out them.
The mandate comes as
Umatilla County reported
weekly case counts exceed-
ing 350 for the 11th straight
week, making the delta crisis
the largest the county has
faced by far. And a recent
spike, driven partly by an
outbreak linked to the Pend-
leton Round-Up, means the
hospital could see yet another
surge in patients.
“There’s some uncer-
tainty, which leads to worry
and concern,” Hardin said.
But for Hardin, she knows
there’s only one thing a chap-
lain can do.
“We try to pass it on to
God,” she said. “We’re chap-
lains. We try to pass those
things on along to that higher
power that can maybe do
something, or at least take
that burden so that we don’t
have to carry it.”