Editor’s Note: The following article is a solutions-based news story produced as part of the Southern New Mexico Journalism Collaborative’s look at COVID-19 recovery.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Loretta Gonzalez would stand outside a Southern New Mexico community center awaiting senior citizens who were arriving for their daily drive-through meal distribution.

With pen and notepad in hand, she’d peer into cars and trucks, smiling back at the masked faces of the elderly who could no longer gather and socialize in the center.

“I would ask them if there was anything they wanted to say to the group,” said Gonzalez, a community health worker in Radium Springs, a small community of about 1,500 along southern New Mexico’s Rio Grande.  

She’d jot down their responses and, during spare moments of the day, translate them into English and Spanish, typing them in large letters onto a single sheet of paper. Then she’d make photocopies and, in the next drive-through meal distribution, would await the return of the elderly circle of friends, now with a stack of their messages to each other.

Read the full story at our SNMJC partner’s website.