Brittany Bruner-Ringo

32, Torrance

After she tested positive for the coronavirus in March, nurse Brittany BrunerRingo quarantined herself in a Torrance hotel room, but she never stopped taking care of people.

The first employee infected in an outbreak at a dementia care facility in West Los Angeles, Bruner-Ringo called and texted colleagues who subsequently fell ill, encouraging them daily to keep a good attitude and reassuring them that they were all going to be OK.

“Brittany was our cheerleader,” one recalled.

The hopeful messages stopped in early April when a clerk at the hotel’s front desk summoned an ambulance for Bruner-Ringo. She was taken to HarborUCLA Medical Center, where she died in the intensive-care unit 19 days later. She was 32.

Growing up in Oklahoma, BrunerRingo saw a nursing career as a kind of birthright. Her mother and grandmother were nurses, and her personality was a natural fit for the field: upbeat, empathetic and helpful.

“Helping others made our sister happy. She was so compassionate,” her sisters Breanna and Marriana Hurd wrote in an email to The Times.

After getting her degree as a licensed vocational nurse, Bruner-Ringo worked in Ohio before a position as a traveling nurse brought her to L.A. She signed on full time in 2019 with the Silverado Beverly Place, which specializes in treating Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia.

She loved sunflowers, and co-workers described her as sharing the flower’s warm toughness. At staff meetings, she was known to speak up about residents she felt needed more attention.

She was in near-constant contact with family members back in Oklahoma. She and her sisters kept video chats open as they went through their days.

When Silverado allowed a patient from New York to move in on March 19, she called her mother, a veteran nurse in Oklahoma City, for advice.

Kim Bruner-Ringo told The Times that her daughter said the man arrived with COVID-19 symptoms, including fever and coughing. The Silverado has denied this and provided medical records indicating he was asymptomatic when Bruner-Ringo initially examined him.

In any case, he was so sick the next day that an ambulance rushed him to Cedars-Sinai, where he was diagnosed with COVID-19.

In the months that followed, 89 other residents and staff contracted the disease. Thirteen would die.

Young and healthy, Bruner-Ringo seemed sure to beat the virus. Even after she was placed on a ventilator, she remained in good spirits.

The hospital nurses told her family “she would smile and her eyes were open most of the time. She was able to nod, follow commands,” her mother said.

Her vital signs were so strong that doctors discussed taking her off the ventilator, but the virus ultimately proved too strong.

She was buried May 1 in Oklahoma City. Her grave was covered with baskets of roses, zinnias, carnations, lilies. Her co-workers sent sunflowers.