As Katie Jacobs Stanton read stories about a deadly outbreak of the new coronavirus ravaging a Seattle-area nursing home in early March, her thoughts immediately turned to her father in Colorado.
The 77-year-old, sports-loving jokester with three grandchildren was a resident of Juniper Village at Aurora, a long-term memory care facility where he had lived for about two years.
While Stanton’s father had been treated well at the small, cozy facility that she said always seemed to smell like apple pie, she worried about the coronavirus’ easy spread and high lethality.
“I remember thinking to myself, ‘Oh my God. This could happen anywhere. This could happen to my dad. This is really scary,’” she said.
Stanton began calling Juniper Village, trying to ensure they were prepared should an outbreak make its way to the Denver suburbs. She said the facility provided proactive communications and assurances that there hadn’t been any confirmed cases there.
Juniper Village said it was working with Colorado health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But Stanton was still nervous. She asked the facility to set up a video call with her father on March 20 and they connected that same day.
“At that point my biggest fear was that I might never see him again because you just didn’t know,” she said. “It was so awesome to see his face. He was smiling. Things seemed OK.”
But then, on March 29, Stanton, a venture capitalist who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, received a voicemail that her father was sick. He had a fever of 102 and his oxygen levels were low.
“I knew that was one of the symptoms and my dad had never been on oxygen before,” she said. “The next day, they called me to tell me that two of the caregivers tested positive.”
Just as his daughter had feared, Herb Jacobs was being swept up in the global pandemic.
Outbreaks of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, have been identified in more than 80 nursing homes and senior care centers across Colorado. Through Wednesday, as many as 176 residents of those facilities had died, according to data released by the state.
Additionally, as many as 628 residents and 510 staff members had tested positive for COVID-19.
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