Enumclaw. If you’ve spent any amount of time around me, you’ve heard about it. A town of about 11,000 people in southern King County, Washington, where I lived the first 16 years of my life. 

Now, however, life has been turned upside down in my hometown due to the novel coronavirus. Washington is where the U.S. saw its first case; King County saw the first death. Enumclaw alone has more cases than 15 Wyoming counties combined. So I started to think: If we are seeing our lives being turned around in a county with one confirmed case, what is happening to the people with whom I grew up? So I asked them. 

“I haven’t talked to or seen any of my friends since the end of February,” said senior Julia Gibb, who works as an on-call CNA at Wesley Arbor, a senior care center in Auburn, Washington. She also provides in-home care for an elderly lady in Buckley, Washington. 

“At my job in the nursing home there are three confirmed cases of the virus,which my boss did not inform me about until I asked,” Gibb said. “[I] told her I won’t come back to work until this is over [because] my other client is immuno-compromised and would probably die from the common cold.” 

Gibb is also a student at Green River College and is set to graduate high school with her AAS in pre-nursing. GRC has taken the same course as Northwest, deciding to switch all classes to online. 

“It’s hard to get passionate and dig into the topics without teachers’ guidance,” Gibb said. “It’s really upsetting because all of my science classes have built up to the quarter only for it to be online and have me lose out on valuable lab practice time.”

Because of her status as a Green River student, Gibb does not spend much time on campus at Enumclaw High School. Because of this I reached out to the person who is most involved in the EHS student body. 

“Several students cheered at the news of the closure, to the dismay of administration and myself,” senior Kaden Bolton said. “Others understood the historical and societal ramifications soon to come and were silent and saddened by the events unfolding.”

Bolton is the Associated Student Body (ASB) President at EHS. He is also an officer of the EHS drama club. 

“The EHS drama program has tentatively postponed our spring musical,” Bolton said. “Personally I’m pretty sad and nervous it won’t happen.”

While our country is facing this crisis, it is important to be vigilant and well-informed. But, here in Powell it is also important to remember how fortunate we are. Many people are in immediate danger.

According to the New York Times, nearly every person in New York City knows someone who is sick. In these times of trouble, be thankful that there are no active cases in Park County and, while caution is still advised, we aren’t putting our lives at stake when we buy groceries.

Bolton ended his interview with the following quote, and I could not think of a better way to phrase it: “I can only hope my own peers return to school happy, healthy and prepared.”