Leona Hernandez, right, holding daughter Diane, is leaving the Twin Cities to use her nursing skills caring for COVID-19 patients in New York City. Also pictured, from left, are her husband, Tony, and sons Cruz and Maximilian.
Courtesy Therese Steinhoff

Leona Hernandez was enjoying life as a mother of three young children. About a year ago, the parishioner of Nativity of Our Lord in St. Paul had stopped working as a nurse so she could be home full-time with Maximilian, 6, Cruz, 3, and Diane, 2.

The COVID-19 pandemic radically changed her future. As she continued staying home with her husband, Tony, and the kids, following Gov. Tim Walz’s stay-at-home order, she began praying about the possibility of going back to work.

There were two compelling reasons: No. 1., Tony’s realty business had screeched to a halt and they needed to boost their finances, and No. 2., she has valuable nursing experience that is desperately needed.

She could have made the safe choice and found a job locally.
She didn’t. Instead, she chose to go into the eye of the COVID-19 storm: New York City.

In late March, she began her discernment process about going back to work. She knew the need was great in New York, and she also knew her five years of experience working in an intensive care unit would be a perfect fit.

So, she did some research to find a travel nurse agency that would help her find a temporary job in New York. She applied, and got an offer within two days.

“It was Friday (April 3),” said Hernandez, 33, in an interview with The Catholic Spirit April 10. “We happened to be on our way … (to pray the Stations of the Cross while walking in their Mendota Heights neighborhood). And, it was raining.”

The call came as they were leaving their house, and Leona accepted later that day. She left for New York April 14 and will be serving for eight weeks at two hospitals in New York City, and said she is certain to be caring for COVID-19 patients. New York leads the nation in both number of cases and deaths, and Hernandez is well aware of that.

“Yeah, I am scared,” she said.

But, overruling the fear is the opportunity to care for patients who are quarantined in a hospital room and have even more fear than she does.

“So many people who are very ill and are alone, I think, is really awful,” she said. “So, while I feel anxiety and sadness about entering that environment, I really am grateful to also be able to be with people at that time who are otherwise alone. To my knowledge, they’re not even seeing chaplains or priests. And, I can’t imagine how awful that would be to be alone.”

With the many deaths occurring, she knows she may care for COVID-19 patients who die on her watch. That’s where she will draw on her experience as an ICU nurse, her job for five years after graduating from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor’s degree in nursing in 2011.

“I do think that it’s a very big honor to be with someone as they are dying,” she said. “I’m sad about it, certainly, but I am also grateful to be able to spend a short amount of time serving and helping in that environment.”

Despite the exposure to COVID-19, she said she is confident about the precautions being taken at the hospitals. She will be given an N95 mask to wear, and will wear a surgical mask over that whenever she enters a patient’s room, plus a face shield over that. She will have a full-length gown and gloves, which she will discard at the end of each of her 12-hour, four-times-a-week shift. After work, she will walk to an empty apartment where she will be staying for the entire eight weeks. She immediately will put all of her work clothes in the laundry and will stay in the apartment until her next shift.

Working in risky situations is not new for her. She worked in a pediatric ICU in the Twin Cities and regularly saw children with serious illnesses.

“I was frequently around viruses that were even more dangerous to children than COVID,” she said. “I would care for children at work, and then I would come home to my children. That was a risk. And, I certainly was as careful as I could be. … I just think that it’s an area where we’re meant to serve at this time. We can be smart about using what we have to protect ourselves. But then, I do think that a lot of it comes down to just trusting that these are people who need to be cared for.”

She intends to bring her faith to the bedsides of people she cares for, praying out loud in some cases, and offering words of comfort in others, all of it driven by a conviction to serve and affirmed by a peace she has felt in the days leading up to her departure from the Twin Cities.

“I have so much faith and trust that (God) will work through me,” she said. “I do think that someone who’s there and is praying — even if it’s silently — and speaking peacefully, I think that that does make a difference, even in a horrible situation.”