‘I can be the person helping.’ On the frontlines with America’s essential workers

This article was originally published by National Geographic.

On a Friday morning in early April, Heval Kelli covered himself in head-to-toe scrubs, a hair net, mask, and booties. Then he took his place as a volunteer physician among the traffic cones winding a course through a COVID-19 drive-thru testing site in the small town of Clarkston, Georgia. It was here, on the outskirts of Atlanta, that Kelli had first arrived 19 years earlier as a refugee from Syria.

Now, he felt, it was his turn to return the favor. “I’m coming back during the American crisis,” he says. “Instead of being the person who needs help, I can be the person helping.”

This motivation threads through a diverse range of essential workers across the United States. It drives Ana-Cara Van Dyck to prepare classwork packets for her students in a rural Alaskan town without internet. It’s shared by 83-year-old Paulette Della Volla, who works six days a week at a McDonald’s in Maryland while younger staff decline to come in. And it moves Sharmin Hoque, in New York, to run “an unofficial support group for kids of taxi drivers.”

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