Local Walgreens pharmacy vaccinates community with compassion and celebration

It was an overwhelming Friday afternoon at the Market Street Walgreens in Greensboro, North Carolina. With state legislators expanding guidelines regarding COVID-19 vaccine eligibility, the store was busier than usual.

“We were accidentally double booked for both doses today. We were able to find enough vaccines for everyone, but it is going to take a little bit longer to get to your appointment,” the pharmacist, Abbey, assured patients waiting in the multivitamin aisle for their shot.

Despite aisles overflowing with patients waiting for their vaccines, the nurses and pharmacists were working to get everyone immunized on time, confirming to those waiting in line for longer than expected that they will receive their shots.

“They were a well-oiled machine,” said Abby Saracino, a patient who waited over two hours for her dose. “[The nurses] were clearly overwhelmed, but they were still making it all happen, they were reassuring and welcoming, and they still had good attitudes.”

An elderly man passed the line, hand full of flowers and chocolate, personally delivering the gifts to his favorite Walgreens employee, Mo, the nurse who gave him his second dose of the Moderna vaccine earlier that morning.

“You just made my day!” Mo exclaimed in the pharmacy section for everyone to hear. “I’m going to seriously cry, sir. Thank you so much. I mean it.”

After every shot, Mo would perform an original song and dance for her patients in celebration of the seemingly small action of receiving their second dose.

“You just got your second dose! You just got your second dose! Let’s get excited,” she would sing in melody after every patient, stomping and clapping to the beat of her own song.

Because Mo was on the dose two side of the pharmacy, she was distributing second doses of the vaccine to a lot of older patients who she all knew by their first names. For them, the vaccine was a life-saver— a chance to see family and friends, a reason to feel safe again.

Hours later as Mo left for the night, she posed for a picture with her flowers and chocolate, recalling how much that small act of kindness meant to her as a co-worker took a photo. She was touched by his sentiment and propped the box of chocolates in the back of the pharmacy to share.

As state officials declared more residents eligible for vaccinations, places like this pharmacy dealt with longer lines of people seeking available shots. Workers said Friday was their most chaotic, and by the end of the day they were exhausted.

“Our system was completely overwhelmed today,” Abbey, told the few nurses left around closing time. “Please, go home. You deserve it.”

Once they left, she was the only Walgreens employee left, with more patients waiting to be vaccinated.

Abbey was not scheduled that day to vaccinate, but with the overwhelming number of eligible patients at the store waiting to receive their shot, she had no choice but to abandon her daily routine and join the group efforts of the nurses. She had some of the other nurses shadowing her, learning the proper techniques and precautions of immunizations.

It’s the end of a long, rough day, and Abbey is helping the last customer.

“I have cried three times today,” she told her final vaccine patient of the day before closing down the store. “In 10 years of working at Walgreens I’ve never cried once. But today, I cried three times,” Abbey says as she presses a tiny round bandage on the stranger’s shoulder, one of hundreds she applied today.