A feature story in The Atlantic last month dubbed Alden Global Capital “the hedge fund killing newspapers.” On Monday, Alden announced that it’s hoping to acquire Lee Enterprises, which owns 13 newspapers in Virginia, including The Daily Progress, Richmond Times-Dispatch, and The Roanoke Times.
The acquisition should set off alarm bells for anyone who cares about local news. In a letter announcing the offer, Alden wrote, “our interest in Lee is a reaffirmation of our substantial commitment to the newspaper industry and our desire to support newspapers over the long term.” The firm’s actions over the last decade suggest the exact opposite is true.
Alden owns more than 200 newspapers. After acquiring a paper, it follows a standard model: “Gut the staff, sell the real estate, jack up subscription prices, and wring out as much cash as possible,” McKay Coppins writes in The Atlantic. That plan turns a quick profit for Alden, and has turned venerable institutions like The Baltimore Sun and Chicago Tribune into hollow husks of their former selves.
In recent years, Progress staff have unionized, in an effort to maintain some autonomy as the newspaper industry further consolidates. “Lee Enterprises is pretty terrible,” tweeted Nolan Stout, a former Progress reporter, “but this would be even worse.”
Atlanta’s Dewberry rots, too
The pile of steel on our Downtown Mall isn’t the only half-finished building owned by John Dewberry that’s rotting on prime real estate. In Atlanta’s desirable Midtown neighborhood, a 21-story office tower called the Campanile has been falling into disrepair for the last two years. “The neglect is starting to show,” reported The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week. “Weeds grow through a chain link fence. Sheets of protective plastic wrap are peeling off the building’s exterior.” Sound familiar?
PC: Ashley Twiggs
Dewberry says construction on the project will resume by Christmas. But Atlantans are skeptical: Dewberry has developed a reputation there for leaving desirable properties unfinished, earning himself a 2017 Bloomberg profile dubbing him “Atlanta’s Emperor of Empty Lots.” Meanwhile, here in Charlottesville, the peeling advertisement on the front of the downtown building still says “Coming spring 2009.”
In brief
Anti-vaxers out at hospital
UVA Health lost 121 of its more than 7,000 employees because they refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine, which was required by November 1. Thirty-nine employees resigned, 64 were fired, and 18 were suspended without pay for refusing to comply. In total, the system has lost 38 nurses and two doctors, reports Charlottesville Tomorrow. UVA Health’s spokesperson says the system anticipated some degree of noncompliance and has been able to manage the losses.
Dominion pays up
The State Corporation Commission and Dominion Energy have agreed on a settlement in which Dominion will dish out $330 million in refunds to customers. The average Dominion Energy user is in line for a $67 refund (in the form of bill credits), and will see their monthly bill decline by 90 cents in the coming years. The settlement averts what could have been a contentious case between the corporation and the state attorney general’s office, which alleged that the energy company had been taking in excess profits over the last three years.
Students protest Rittenhouse verdict
About 200 UVA students and members of the Charlottesville community chanted “no justice, no peace, no racist police” as they marched from the UPD station on the Corner to Carr’s Hill on Saturday afternoon, in protest of the verdict in Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial. Rittenhouse was acquitted Friday on all five counts brought against him after he shot and killed two men and injured a third during a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020. Saturday’s demonstration was organized by student groups such as the Black Student Alliance and the Young Democratic Socialists of America at UVA, and included a series of speakers.
Nearly one year after the first coronavirus cases were reported in the U.S., UVA hospital and Sentara Martha Jefferson have received their first shipments of the Pfizer vaccine, and begun vaccinating employees who come in direct contact with coronavirus patients. PC: Sanjay Suchek
Last Tuesday, UVA hospital’s ICU director Taison Bell became one of the first people in Charlottesville to receive the newly approved coronavirus vaccine. It was a moment of “mixed emotions,” says Bell, who has worked with COVID patients throughout the crisis.
“It was definitely a good feeling to finally have something that can potentially protect you and your family from COVID-19, but also bittersweet,” he says. “In order to get to this point, so many hundreds of thousands of people have died…It was just ironic that the key to getting out of this was in this tiny little vial.”
Nearly one year after the first coronavirus cases were reported in the U.S., the vaccine is finally available. Shortly after the Food and Drug Administration approved the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use on December 11, it was sent to hospitals across the country, including here in Charlottesville.
Last Tuesday, UVA hospital received 3,000 doses of the vaccine. The day before, Sentara, which runs Martha Jefferson, received 11,700 doses to be shared among multiple facilities. Both hospitals immediately began vaccinating doctors, nurses, and other staff who come in direct contact with coronavirus patients in the COVID-19 unit or the emergency department.
Once these high-risk employees are vaccinated—and the two health care systems receive additional shipments—the shot will be available to essential hospital workers, then to the rest of the staff, with priority placed on those who are medically vulnerable.
Local long-term care facilities will be able to receive on-site vaccination services from pharmacies, including Walgreens and CVS.
On Friday, the Moderna vaccine was also approved by the FDA, and shipped to hospitals two days later.
Both vaccines—currently available only to adults—have over 95 percent effective rates, and require two doses in order to be fully effective. Pfizer’s doses must be spaced out by 21 days, while Moderna’s require a 28-day wait.
Bell says he felt fine after receiving the shot, despite the mild discomfort from the needle. However, recipients may experience mild side effects, including fatigue, chills, body aches, or headaches.
While the long-term effects of the vaccine are still unknown, science and safety were not “cut short” in the approval process, explains Bell.
“[It] is based on a platform called messenger RNA technology, which is novel in the sense that it hasn’t been used in a licensed vaccine before—but the actual science and study behind it has been going on for more than a decade,” he says. “I have no doubt [that] it’s safe.”
mRNA ultimately protects recipients from developing symptoms of the virus. It has yet to be determined if either vaccine can completely prevent COVID-19 infections.
The $9 billion government investment into the vaccine also expedited its development and distribution, explains Bell. And as COVID cases continue to spike around the country, researchers had little trouble finding people infected with the virus who were willing to participate in trials, which can be a challenge when developing vaccines for different diseases.
According to the Thomas Jefferson Health District’s Emergency Manager Jessica Coughlin, the next stages of vaccine distribution will likely take several months to get through.
After health care employees, essential workers—including teachers, paramedics, bus drivers, and service workers—will be next in line for the shot, along with high-risk populations. The Centers for Disease Control has released loose guidelines for vaccine distribution priority, but states and hospital systems still have significant control over the specifics of the rollout process.
The vaccine is not expected to be available to the general public until early summer. But with more than 200 coronavirus vaccines still in development across the globe, this timeline may change. Because the development of the vaccine was paid for by the federal government, it will be free to all who decide to get it.
Developing the vaccine is one thing. Convincing people to take it could be a different challenge. America’s long and brutal history of medical racism has left many people in the Black community mistrustful of the coronavirus vaccine, says Bell.
From 1932 to 1972, in the infamous Tuskegee experiment, the U.S. Public Health Service allowed nearly 400 Black men in Alabama with syphilis to go untreated in order to study the full progression of the disease, causing many participants to suffer from blindness, insanity, and other severe health problems. Meanwhile, in Charlottesville, UVA was a hub for eugenic science. Doctors in Virginia sterilized thousands of Black people without their consent from the 1920s to the 1970s.
“The Black community remembers these insults…[They] must be addressed head-on,” says Bell. “It’s not a matter of just saying, ‘Oh, well trust us now.’ Because the same message was given to people back in Tuskegee and the eugenics movement.”
While there is no single solution to this deep-rooted trauma, Bell encourages his colleagues to “recognize these wounds,” and work to heal them by being honest, transparent, and explaining as much as possible. They must also assure concerned patients that Black people have been a part of the research, development, and trials for the vaccine from the very beginning.
Coughlin says primary care physicians will be best-equipped to help people make good choices around the vaccine, and that the health district is encouraging people to “do their research, look at official sources, and speak with their physicians.”
Though UVA Health System’s furloughs ended over the summer, the hospital is still understaffed. PC: Skyclad Aerial
In May, the University of Virginia Health System sparked public outcry when it placed over 500 employees on furlough, citing millions of dollars in pandemic-related financial losses. Affected staff were out of work for up to three months, and were not paid.
Though some feared the staffing cuts would be extended, furloughs—along with pay reductions—finally came to an end on July 25 for the UVA Medical Center, and on August 16 for the School of Medicine.
“Everyone is back,” says Chief Operating Officer Wendy Horton. “Actually, because there was a pent-up…demand, now we’re really busy…we’re actually hiring.”
Hospital staff, which has been stretched thin for months, desperately await those new hires, say multiple employees.
“The whole time of COVID has been a time of staffing crisis at the hospital, because it took such a financial hit when they canceled elective surgeries,” says a nurse aide who works in various units. “Every unit at the hospital is short staffed, more often than not…[We] do not have enough nursing and support staff.”
“Everybody is really experiencing some type of staffing stressor,” says another nurse, who works in the COVID intensive care unit. In recent months, employees have been constantly shuffled around, and even after the shuffling, some units don’t have enough employees with the specific skills required to make things run smoothly.
As the pandemic rages on, even the hospital’s COVID unit has suffered from staffing shortages. At the beginning of the pandemic, employees from units with low patient count were brought into the coronavirus unit as support staff, explains the ICU nurse.
“But when the furlough ended in July, they had to send all of those people back, so that left a lot of holes for where we were having support staff,” the COVID ICU nurse says.
The COVID unit has also seen some staff leave for different posts, due to months of pandemic burnout. “The first three months of, ‘I hope my equipment works. I can’t see my family. The world is shutting down. My patients are dying alone’…That took a huge toll,” says the COVID ICU nurse.
The potential for internal coronavirus outbreaks at the hospital has only exacerbated staffing fears.
Around two weeks ago, a patient with complex medical problems from another facility came into the UVA hospital without any COVID-19 symptoms, but developed them within a few days and tested positive soon after. About a dozen employees who had come in contact with the patient were put into quarantine.
The “unit basically had to shut down,” says the nurse aide. “It wasn’t that patient’s fault. It was that staff had on inadequate PPE because it was not known that they were COVID positive.”
The employees completed their two-week quarantine at the beginning of this week. They were paid during their absence.
“As far as we know, no one has developed symptoms,” Chief Medical Officer Dr. Reid Adams told C-VILLE on November 5. “People are at home finishing their quarantine, and we expect all or most of them will be back over the weekend.”
According to the nurse aide, there’s also been at least one coronavirus outbreak in the hospital that started with a staff member, who contracted it from the community.
“I was alarmed…I hadn’t heard anything about this outbreak among staff from any of the official university communications,” says the nurse aide. “I didn’t learn about it until I was there.”
“We do know that some employees have been exposed at home, and have developed symptoms and tested positive through the community,” says Adams. “The vast majority of our workforce that has tested positive are due to community exposures…not from care in the hospital.”
According to hospital spokesperson Eric Swensen, less than 7 percent of employees who’ve tested positive for COVID contracted it from the hospital.
Though these internal outbreaks have been more or less contained thus far, the constant threat is difficult for employees. They are also worried about the possibility of a dramatic spike in cases during the winter, putting an additional burden on the hospital’s limited staff.
“There’s definitely great anxiety among staff that it could get worse pretty soon,” says the nurse aide. “Our colleagues in Lynchburg are seeing [their] hospital fill up, and things are pretty bad down in Bristol too.”
And while UVA hospital is currently hiring, training new employees puts an additional burden on the current staff, explains the COVID ICU nurse. “That’s kind of a stressor there.”
To both recruit and retain staff, the nurse aide believes the administration needs to pay all of its employees more, and give them more authority.
“To really create stable staffing at this hospital, we just need to be spending more on labor. Also, decision making in the hospital is extremely top-down. Hospital workers need more power in these decision making processes.”
In light of the hospital’s situation, both employees urge the community to continue to wear masks and practice social distancing, and show appreciation to health care workers.
“If you know someone who works for the hospital system, tell them thank you,” says the COVID ICU nurse.
UVA hospital has been providing medical screening for a variety of diseases as a precaution for the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic. PC: Zack Wajsgras
In just a matter of days, the number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the Thomas Jefferson Health District has jumped from one to 16, including four in the City of Charlottesville and six in Albemarle County. While the first case was initially thought to be travel-related, it’s now unclear how the individual, a staff member at the UVA women’s center, came in contact with COVID-19, according to the health department. The department is also investigating how the remaining ten individuals contracted the virus, and who else they could have exposed to it.
With the number of coronavirus cases in Charlottesville only expected to grow, local hospitals are taking extensive measures to prepare for an influx of patients, as well as to assist those currently seeking testing and treatment. In some parts of Italy and, most recently, New York City, an exponential spike in cases has overwhelmed local health care systems, leading to critical shortages of beds and ventilators.
According to spokesman Eric Swensen, UVA Health System is postponing most clinical visits and surgeries scheduled between now and April 6, with the exception of urgent care, in order to “conserve our resources” and “build capacity to be able to care for folks when they need it.” To minimize the potential spread of the virus, patients at UVA hospital are no longer able to have visitors (with some exceptions).
UVA staff is also screening everyone before allowing them to enter any facilities, he adds. “If you’re a visitor and are showing any kind of respiratory symptoms or possible exposure to coronavirus, we’re not going to allow you into our clinic or medical center.”
Swensen says there’s been a significant number of people calling UVA health care providers, as well as the UVA health call center, with questions and concerns about coronavirus. In order to prevent the virus from spreading, he urges those who think they may have the virus to call their primary care provider (or, if they don’t have one, the Virginia Department of Health hotline), and not rush to the emergency room. A doctor will then screen them over the phone for common symptoms of the coronavirus—fever, cough, and difficulty breathing—and ask about their travel history and potential exposure to the virus. If they meet the CDC criteria for testing, a doctor can send them to UVA’s referral-only coronavirus clinic.
In light of the severe national shortages of coronavirus tests, UVA health is now one of the few institutions across the country that has created its own tests, with a goal to have results within one to two days, Swensen says. Due to this increase in testing capacity, it expects to see a spike in local confirmed cases of the virus in the upcoming days.
“Depending on the severity of their symptoms…not everyone necessarily who gets coronavirus will need hospital care,” Swensen adds. “The first case in Charlottesville is an example of this, where that person is being evaluated and cared for from home.”
According to a news release, one of the other local residents diagnosed with the virus, a UVA student living off-Grounds in Albemarle County who may have contracted it while traveling, is also currently in isolation.
Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital has taken similar steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 within its facilities. The hospital has a “fair amount” of ventilators and isolation rooms available, says Vice President of Medical Affairs Paul Tesoriere, and is working with the government to get more testing kits.
“We’ve identified different areas that we will expand into if we get into a situation where we get a significant influx in patients,” says Tesoriere, “areas that are not being as utilized because the virus has cut down on some procedures or visits.”
A task force meets several times a day to address daily needs and long-term plans.
The TJHD is working closely with both UVA and Sentara, as well as other community partners, to oversee the area’s pandemic response effort and investigate the cases in Charlottesville. But it generally does not supply testing kits or personal protective gear, including masks, goggles, and gloves. Due to the mass shortage of such gear, local doctors and nurses are currently hosting an Equip Cville emergency supply drive (see page 9), collecting donations from businesses, labs, and schools, in partnership with Support Cville.
“We are working on compiling a list of those in the community that need PPE, and any extra we have we will make sure to get to the appropriate individuals in appropriate health care settings,” says TJHD’s Public Information Officer Kathryn Goodman. “[However,] the demand for [PPE] is unprecedented, and suppliers do not have the inventory to keep up with demand. Local health care providers trying to purchase critical supplies are competing with all providers across the county…efforts like [Equip Cville] are essential to the long-term success of what will be a lengthy response.”
But tests, investigations, and supplies alone will not bring an end to the coronavirus pandemic, Goodman adds. Social distancing, or self-quarantining, is equally as important.
“We know that there will be cases in this community, and so we’re asking people to stay home as much as possible so that we can prevent and lower the number of cases we see in the area,” she says. “If people do have to go out in public, stay six feet away from one another. [But] if people can just stay home, that’s the best thing we’re going to be able to do to prevent the spread of this.”
When to call your doctor
Symptoms of COVID-19 can range from very mild to severe (or, in some cases, may not occur at all), and usually appear within two to 14 days after being exposed to the virus. They include:
Fever
Tiredness
Cough
Shortness of breath
Difficulty breathing
If you are experiencing these symptoms, and know or suspect that you’ve been in contact with a person who has COVID-19, or have traveled to an area with a COVID-19 outbreak, you should call your primary care doctor. If you don’t have one, you can also call your local emergency room, urgent care clinic, or a coronavirus hotline:
Contact your doctor early if you’re 60 or older, or have underlying chronic medical conditions, even if your symptoms are mild. Seek medical attention immediately if you’re experiencing any of these emergency warning signs of COVID-19:
Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
Persistent pain or pressure in the chest
New confusion or inability to arouse
Bluish lips or face
Updated 3/25 to reflect accurate number of local coronavirus cases
Due to the coronavirus, Trader Joe’s is limiting customers to 30 at a time inside the store. PC: Eze Amos
Suddenly, a new normal
Just two weeks ago—two weeks ago!—our schools were open, our basketball team was eyeing a tournament run, and our restaurants were dusting off the patio furniture for long evenings of springtime outdoor dining.
But thanks to the spread of the infectious and dangerous novel coronavirus, Charlottesville has had to quickly adjust to a new normal.
Parents are scrambling to keep their kids entertained for hours on end, and they can’t just throw them outside, because even the playgrounds are closed. Grocery stores have been cleaned out, as people stock up for a long period of social distancing (Trader Joe’s is limiting customers to 30 at a time inside the store). And on Monday, Governor Ralph Northam announced the closure of non-essential businesses—including gyms, barber shops, and salons—and banned gatherings of more than 10 people.
PC: Staff, Zack Waksgras, Eze Amos
The town’s health care infrastructure has braced itself for what appears to be an imminent rush of new patients. UVA hospital, which made drastic changes to its visitor policy March 22, has set up a screening station at its entrance, and health care providers are short on personal protective gear, including masks, gloves, and goggles.
Restaurants have shifted to take-out only, including Bodo’s, which for so long resisted the tantalizing potential of the Emmet Street and Preston Avenue stores’ already installed drive-through windows. In times like these, it’s good to accentuate the positive: Yes, we’re in the thick of a global pandemic and a total economic collapse, but at least we’ve got drive-through bagels.
____________
Quote of the Week
“The sooner we can get this health crisis under control, the sooner our economy will recover… We must put aside what we want and replace it with what we need.”
—Virginia Governor Ralph Northam on his directive, issued March 23, to close non-essential businesses for 30 days
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More masks, please!
Local health care workers are soliciting donations of masks, gloves, goggles, and other household goods in the face of a national shortage of protective gear. Paige Perriello, an area pediatrician, tweeted a picture of herself wearing a mask made of styrofoam and a piece of clear plastic with the caption “Charlottesville’s innovators are coming to our aid!” The initiative is called Equip Cville, and donations can be left at Champion brewery from 11am-1pm every day—see supportcville.com for details.
Pediatrician Paige Perriello PC: Twitter
Budget burdens
This year’s city budget discussions were contentious even before the added stress of a worldwide public health crisis. Now, with COVID-19 shutting down the restaurant and tourism industries, and meals and lodging tax revenues falling accordingly, the city has announced it will need to cut an additional $5 million from the final budget. The budget was supposed to be finalized in April, but for obvious reasons it will not be finished on schedule.
Community cares
The Charlottesville Area Community Foundation has raised more than $2 million for its emergency response fund, thanks to Dave Matthews Band’s Bama Works Fund, the Batten Family Fund, the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and more than 150 other donors. In partnership with Cville Community Cares and United Way, as well the city and county, CACF will distribute the money to area households impacted by COVID-19 and community-based organizations that provide food, housing, and other forms of basic assistance.
Taking a stand
A group of UVA student activists has created a petition demanding greater resources and support from the university, particularly for students who are low-income, first-generation, and immunocompromised. The petition asks UVA to provide non-student workers (such as Aramark employees) and non-federal work study student workers with paid sick leave; refund housing, meals plans, and tuition/fees (or provide a prorated credit for next semester); offer housing to housing-insecure students and community members; and establish a mutual aid fund for students and low-wage workers with unexpected expenses, among other demands. It has been signed by more than 750 other students, alumni, faculty, staff, and community members.
Charlottesville’s never been known for its nightlife. Sure, there are some late-night restaurant-bars, and concerts, dance parties, and other entertainment events that go past midnight. Those who venture out in the dead of night, onto Charlottesville’s open streets and empty sidewalks, past closed businesses and dark houses, might say that the city is, well, dead.
But that’s not the case at all. Plenty of people are awake and active, particularly those working the night shift.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 15 million people in America work regular or sporadic night shifts—that’s about 5 percent of the country’s total population. For some, it’s a choice (they prefer to work at a time when they’ll mostly be left alone), for others, a necessity: A number of workers in this story have two, or even three, jobs. In some fields, night shifts do pay slightly more than day shifts.
Here in the Charlottesville area, many people work all night to make life easier, better, or safer, for others. Their labor often goes unnoticed and unappreciated, though, because it’s done when most people literally have their eyes shut.
Over several recent nights, photographer Eze Amos and I took at a peek at some of the things that go on in town long after the sun goes down. It’s a chance to get to know some of the people who do that work and see, just briefly, what their lives are like.
Photos by Eze Amos, words by Erin O’Hare
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Kroger
The Kroger at Barracks Road Shopping Center is open 24 hours a day. And while the store’s not exactly humming with customers overnight, it is bustling with hustling employees.
Between the hours of 10:30pm and 7am, Kroger’s overnight staff restocks bags of potato chips and boxes of Pocky, cans of beans and bottles of beer, piles of apples and containers of almonds. They update price and sale tags, clean up the back room and storage areas, create end displays, unload nightly truck deliveries, and make sure in-store machinery runs smoothly. And, of course, they assist customers (like a Domino’s delivery guy) who shop after their own late shifts.
Mike Page has worked the night shift at Kroger for about four years now, and he likes it quite a bit. It pays better, he says, and having fewer customers in the store gives the staff a chance to build a really unique camaraderie. “We play when it’s time to play, and work when it’s time to work.”
Page is a shift lead, but he still straps scuffed knee pads over his work pants to push pallets and stock shelves alongside his colleagues. He manages truck deliveries, too, and on this particular night, he’s facing an unprecedented situation: both trucks (it’s a two-truck delivery night) are stuck in the shopping center parking lot, a mere few hundred feet from the Kroger delivery berth.
For safety reasons, the Department of Transportation limits freight and truck drivers to 11 hours of driving time before a mandatory 10-hour break. Page has had delivery trucks stop a few towns, or even just a few miles away, but never this close to the store; the trucks cannot legally drive the final few feet until the following morning. It might mean a longer in-store shift for Page and some other folks, but Page says he understands. They’ll make it work.
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Newspaper delivery
Every Tuesday night, Dale Anderson waits for the call.
It comes late, usually around midnight, the indication that a few thousand copies of C-VILLE Weekly are hot off the press and ready for him to deliver. For the next 12 hours, Anderson will drive all over Charlottesville, putting weekly papers into blue boxes and designated racks, picking up any left over from the previous week’s delivery, and seeing which of C-VILLE’s magazines, such as Knife & Fork, Abode, and Unbound, need to be restocked at which locations. Then he stocks those, too.
He has to be purposeful about where he delivers, when: While most news-paper boxes are in public places, a number of racks are located inside buildings and businesses that aren’t open until the morning.
In addition to distributing for C-VILLE, Anderson delivers Crime Times and the Blue Ridge Buck Saver. He also owns and drives a taxi.
“It doesn’t hurt me none,” Anderson says about working night shifts that often extend into the morning, or even afternoon. “I’m only a four-hour sleeper anyway. I’m just used to it! My body likes four hours of sleep.” Maybe, he wonders out loud, because he and his wife have seven children, so he’s “used to being up and down” at all hours of the day and night.
Anderson started delivering more than 20 years ago, “back when newspapers were king” and daily deliveries kicked off somewhere around 2am. He worked for The Washington Post, and then The Hook (which merged with C-VILLE in 2011); now, he’s delivered for C-VILLE for so long that he knows every route by heart and is often the one to pick up other drivers’ routes when they’re on vacation or call out sick.
“The thing about working late at night is that it’s much easier. You don’t have people in your face, you don’t have traffic,” he says, laughing. “Charlottesville’s not a super happening town in the middle of the night.”
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Emergency Communications Center
When Lisa Fitzgerald applied to work at the Charlottesville-UVA-Albemarle County Emergency Communications Center 31 years ago, she thought she’d just be answering phones. But during her yearlong training, she realized that taking 9-1-1 calls is a way to actively help people…just without the blood and guts. Now a public safety communications supervisor, she not only works a full-time shift load, she helps train new hires for the job she’s come to love.
Fitzgerald has worked days but she prefers nights, in part because night calls tend to be more urgent. “And it’s never the same night twice.” A couple weeks ago, she delivered a baby over the phone. The next night, she took a call for a shooting.
Fire, police, and EMS workers are often heralded as “first responders” for being the first to arrive on the scene of an incident. But “we’re answering the phone. We’re really the first ones,” says Fitzgerald of emergency call takers and dispatch operators. Depending on how an incident is handled over the phone—if she’s able to calm down a hysterical caller and get more information to relay over the radio—it can make a big difference for when fire, EMS, and police do arrive on the scene.
Full-time ECC employees like Fitzgerald work 12-hour shifts, and it’s not an easy job—each call is unique, some are very stressful, and call takers are under a lot of pressure to respond responsibly and well. It takes a year to be fully trained, longer if the ECC is shorthanded (as it has been recently) and needs experienced workers to take calls instead of teach trainees.
There’s often a personal price paid, too. Sleeping during the day can be difficult. It’s noisier, and more people are apt to contact Fitzgerald via phone or email, expecting an immediate reply. “People who don’t work the night shift don’t understand,” she says, adding that “family life suffers a bit, too,” though she says her two children have come to understand her unconventional schedule. For instance, she says, “Christmas is whatever day I’m off around Christmas. But I think I’d be bored doing anything else.”
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Planet Fitness
Nighttime isn’t terribly busy inside the 24-hour Planet Fitness gym located inside 5th Street Station, says front desk clerk Christian George, with just a handful of people coming in after their own late work shifts. Activity picks up around 3:30am, when folks start to trickle in for their pre-work morning workouts. The televisions are always on, as is the music, and George is always busy—when she’s not greeting people who walk through the door, checking them in and tidying up the desk area, she’s doing gym-related paperwork. The 10pm to 4am overnight shift works well with her schedule—it’s a part-time gig for her; she also works at UVA hospital. During her shift, she often chats with Planet Fitness custodian Carl Monroe, who cleans during the overnight shift five nights a week.
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“I love working in the gym because I talk a lot,” says Monroe (to knowing laughter from George). He likes to chat with customers as he cleans the 90-or-so machines, plus mats, mirrors, floors, bathrooms, and locker rooms. Monroe, who’s 62, worked at Gold’s Gym on Hydraulic Road for years; when Gold’s closed, he was worried that, at his age, he wouldn’t be able to find a job, as businesses seem to prefer to hire younger workers. “How are older folks supposed to live?” he asks.
“This is one of the cleanest gyms out there,” says Monroe. “We take pride in it, but we don’t get the credit for it.” He notes that when he’s not at work, people ask where he’s been.
It’s true, says George. Customers want to know if he’s okay…and they notice when the gym hasn’t received Monroe’s golden touch.
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Omni Hotel/UVA Hospital
Joseph Sesay arrived in Charlottesville in August 2004. One month later, he started working as a bellman at the Omni Charlottesville Hotel, and he’s been there ever since, working the second shift, 2:30 to 11pm. He escorts guests to their rooms, gives them the rundown of amenities available at the hotel (indoor pool, outdoor pool, bar and restaurant, fitness center, etc.) and in the immediate vicinity. He makes sure guests have their luggage, enough towels, anything else they may need or want. It’s not heavy work—talking with guests is mostly quite enjoyable, says Sesay, who came to Charlottesville as a refugee from Sierra Leone.
Sesay’s heavy work begins after his Omni shift, when he heads directly to his second full-time job as a housekeeping team lead at the University of Virginia hospital. He inspects all of the recently vacated rooms on floors three through eight, assessing whether they’ve been cleaned well and with the appropriate chemicals based on what’s happened in the room. Sometimes, as is the case with labor and delivery, there’s a lot to clean up—extra sheets, blood, other bodily tissues and fluids. When the morning shift takes over at 7:30, Sesay’s done with room inspections, but he still has to do payroll. He gets home around 8:30am, goes to bed around 9:30, and manages to sleep for about 4 hours until he gets up to return to the Omni.
Working two full-time jobs, Sesay’s got to be tired. “At times, I am,” he admits. But he does it to support his family—his wife and daughter here in the States as well as his sister and her three children back in Sierra Leone; all three kids are doing spectacularly in school and in their trade programs, Sesay says, smiling.
On his precious days off, he cooks.
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Lucky 7
Lucky 7 is the only 24-hour food spot in downtown Charlottesville, so it’s a bit of a destination. The 10pm to 7am night shift isn’t slow, but it’s not terribly busy, either, says Ron Jude, who’s worked at the convenience store for a few weeks now. “It’s something to do to keep me occupied, keep me out of the house,” he says.
There’s a fairly steady stream of customers and a nightly pre-midnight rush when folks come in to buy cigarettes and alcohol before sale of the latter is prohibited per state liquor laws. Things pick up again a bit after 2am, as bars let out and customers are looking for a bite to eat, or for more alcohol (when they can’t buy it at that hour, says Jude, some people try to steal it). Many of the store’s nighttime customers are homeless folks or people stopping in after working their own late-night jobs.
Jude’s lived in Charlottesville off and on for about 30 years, and he says that while Charlottesville’s not as “crazy” as other places he’s lived, Lucky 7 customers still manage to surprise him, like a guy who recently came in flamboyantly dressed, fresh from a rave (yes, a rave…in Charlottesville).
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Red Carpet Inn
Travis Hilton says his job is “pretty boring 99 percent of the time.”
The 11:30pm-7:30am front desk shift at the Red Carpet Inn on Route 29 is relatively quiet. Hilton, the night auditor, spends most of that time doing the hotel’s general accounting, though he’s occasionally summoned to check in guests (between three and eight on a regular night, upwards of a dozen on UVA basketball and football game weekends), and tote bottles of shampoo, extra towels, and rollaway beds to one of the hotel’s 115 rooms.
Hilton started working hotel night shifts when he was in high school. In his 20-plus years in the industry, he’s learned that those hotels with ballrooms, event spaces, and full-service bars and restaurants are more active at night (this isn’t the case at the Red Carpet Inn). He’s seen his share of drunken antics, and at least one room completely destroyed by cats (it required a complete reupholster). He’s seen a drug bust go down, too, but he says his stories aren’t nearly as flashy as those his boss has told about working at a hotel across the street from the Pentagon, where there were tales of car chases and briefcase switches.
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Parking lot cleaning
From about 9pm to 7am most nights of the week, Brian (who asked that we not used his last name) drives a truck for Sweeping Corporation of America, sweep-cleaning the asphalt and replacing garbage can liners in shopping center parking lots all over town (like 5th Street Station and Barracks Road Shopping Center, to name just a couple). It’s a fairly quiet job, one best accomplished at night when there’s not a lot of traffic in the lots. But there’s always someone in every lot, he says. People traveling in RVs often park in shopping center lots overnight, as do people who live in their cars. Teenagers, he’s noticed, tend to hang out in movie theater parking lots.
Brian is quick to point out that “everything in life requires a job to be done.” When he brings his truck back to the garage at the end of his shift, someone else is going to wash it, he says. A third person will put air in the tires and make sure that everything’s running smoothly under the hood. And so on, and so on.
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Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport
By 3 o’clock in the morning, a few passengers are already waiting to check in for their flights at Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport…but there aren’t any staff in the place yet. That is, except for Steve, the morning shuttle bus driver who picks up airline, runway, and TSA staff from the employee parking lot and delivers them to the terminal to prep for the first flights.
Steve, who lives in Culpeper and has driven the CHO shuttle bus for seven years, wakes at 1am in order to arrive on time for his 12-hour shift. He knows every staff member who gets on the shuttle, greeting almost all of them by name and asking if there’s anyone left in the parking lot so as not to make them wait 10 minutes for his next loop. He inquires after children and grandchildren, and happily answers questions about his own grandbaby (who just turned 2).
Most airport workers have two jobs, Steve explains. One man works on the runway from 4-8am before heading to work at CVS, where he’s a manager. One young airline desk and gate attendant is a high school student, who comes in to work that 4-8am shift before heading to homeroom. “He’s an amazing young man, really intelligent,” says Steve, and damn good at his job. “One day, we’ll look back and say ‘we knew him when.’”
Most of them also do it for the flight benefits. One airline gate agent who drives over from Harrisonburg every morning says that her airline job allows her to visit her daughter in Houston a few times a year, something she might not be able to do otherwise. Hers is a pretty common story, says Steve.
By 4 o’clock—just one hour later—CHO is up and running. Taxis and hotel buses and cars pull up to the terminal doors to drop off travelers. Desk agents check bags and boarding passes as TSA agents run security checks. Concession stand workers brew coffee and make breakfast sandwiches near the gates, and out on the runway, more workers (including air traffic control) ready the planes for takeoff.
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Insomniac
The older Sean Tubbs gets, the more he yearns for an early bedtime. Most nights, he can get to sleep early, but he can’t seem to get the recommended eight consecutive hours.
After working as a journalist for many years, where he often had to stay up very late or wake very early to cover an event or make a deadline, Tubbs is used to running on maybe four hours of sleep a night. And while he’s no longer a journalist (he currently works as a field representative for the Piedmont Environmental Council) he says he still can’t manage to sleep more than a few hours at a time and is often awake at 3am.
At that hour, he tunes in to the industrial hum coming from the nearby UVA hospital, or the sound of the Pegasus helicopter whirring to its landing pad. Most nights, he hears the rumble of a dump truck, or a fox screaming in the field behind his house. In the summer, he hears mockingbirds.
Tubbs knows he’s not the only insomniac in town: Through his windows, he notices a “surprising amount of people” awake, driving and walking through the neighborhood.
He prefers to wander around his house in the wee hours, “relishing” his thinking time. He resists picking up his phone to tweet about public transportation, and while he tries not to work (something he’d have done were he still reporting), he does allow himself to think about work.
“I think about what my day’s going to be, the challenges I’m going to have. It’s useful, that kind of worry.”
After a couple hours, Tubbs is sleepy enough to return to bed.
DuCard Vineyards is hosting a catered dinner and a show, during which guests will have to solve a mystery before the night is over. $79, 6:30pm. DuCard Vineyards, 40 Gibson Hollow Ln., Etlan. (540) 923-4206.
Family
Crozet Independence Day celebration
Saturday, June 30
The Crozet Volunteer Fire Department leads the way with a parade, followed by festivities in the park that include live music, food and a fireworks show. $4 per person (kids 12 and under free) for park entry, 5-10pm. Claudius Crozet Park, 1075Claudius Crozet Park, Crozet. crozet community.org
Health & Wellness
Newborn care class
Thursday, June 28
The UVA Hospital is holding a class that covers everything from how to care for a newborn, to behavior habits and the basics of baby care, along with other resources. Free, 6:30-8:30pm. UVA Hospital, 1215 Lee St. 924-0000.
Nonprofit
Chickens at Jefferson’s Monticello
Thursday, June 28
Pat Foreman, known as “The Chicken Whisperer,” will demonstrate how integral poultry was as a sourceof food and income for the enslaved community at Monticello. $55, 6- 8pm. 931 Thomas Jefferson Pkwy. 984-9880.
