Warriors guard Lee salutes the family business
Mother, aunt are on the front lines of the pandemic
Damion Lee was 5 when he and his mother moved into a fourbedroom house on New York’s Long Island with his aunt and three cousins.
For the next four years, Michelle Riddick and her older sister, Cynthia RiddickHall, coordinated their nursing shifts at local hospitals to ensure that one of them was home with the kids. Given that Lee was too young to understand exactly what his mom and aunt did for a living, Riddick and RiddickHall explained their jobs in the simplest of terms.
“I’d hear them talk about the (operating room), the endoscopy unit or the NICU, but I didn’t know what all of that really was,” Lee, now a shooting guard for the Warriors, said in a recent phone interview. “I just knew what they told me, which was that they were trying to help save lives.”
As Golden State waits to learn when — and if — it’ll play another game this season, Lee, 27, is trying to keep his mind occupied while he passes the shelterinplace doldrums at his San Mateo home. Too much free time can breed anxiety, a risky proposition for someone who counts his two parental figures among the millions of health care professionals on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.
RiddickHall is a case man
ager at Huntington Hospital on the north shore of Long Island, where her unit became fully dedicated to coronavirus patients six weeks ago to help accommodate overflow from Brooklyn hospitals that were running out of beds. Her primary responsibility is to make sure that the people she sees have everything they need before they get sent home.
At the start of each shift, RiddickHall dons a mask, face shield, gloves and hair net to meet with COVID19 patients. Over her 27 years as a nurse, she has seen almost every health scare the U.S. has endured, from SARS to Ebola. Nothing has been quite as unpredictable as the coronavirus.
Just when she thinks she has grasped all of the disease’s possible symptoms, she notices new ones emerge. There also is no way to know how quickly the virus will become fatal.
“You might think that a patient’s doing great, then, all of a sudden, they could be doing poorly,” said RiddickHall, whose unit has treated hundreds of coronavirus patients in recent weeks. “Things can switch so quickly. A patient can be on three liters of oxygen and then, within 24 hours, they need to be on a ventilator. This virus has just been so tricky with what it does.”
As a hospital transition coordinator at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, the younger Riddick helps oversee the next phase of the coronavirus recovery process. Once a patient is released, she monitors his or her progress, acting as a representative for CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield — a major healthinsurance company — to ensure that the member receives quality care.
Though Riddick has worked from home since midMarch, she is well aware of the coronavirus’ toll. Her 11 COVID19 patients have ranged in age from their 30s to 70s. At the moment, two are intubated.
“I’ve definitely had conversations with Damion about just how serious this all is,” Riddick said. “He understands how serious it is, and I know he’s not taking it lightly.”
Even though Lee knew at a young age that his mom did good work, he often wished she could be home more. Riddick worked 12hour shifts for much of Lee’s elementary school years. While RiddickHall stayed home during the day to watch Lee and her three kids, Riddick left before her only child awoke for school and returned when he was getting ready for bed.
In 2004, when Riddick told him that they were having a house built in the Baltimore area, Lee said he’d move under only one condition: Mom stops working 12hour shifts. It was a deal. Between her eight and 10hour shifts, Riddick shuttled Lee to practices and games.
For two years, they left the house at 5:30 a.m. so she could drop him off at his high school more than an hour away before she had to be at work. As Lee blossomed into an NBA prospect at Louisville, he began to think about ways to repay his mom — not just for providing for him as a single parent, but for sacrificing what little free time she had to support his basketball career.
Over the past two years, Lee has built the L.E.E. (Leverages Excellence through Experiences) Way — a nonprofit that uses sports to help mentor atrisk kids. Riddick, who long wanted to help run a foundation, oversees much of the programming when she’s not meeting with coronavirus patients over the phone.
Between working out, watching Netflix and playing video games, Lee makes sure to check with his mom and aunt every couple of days. Last week, during a family Zoom call for Riddick’s birthday, he received some good news: Some of the coronavirus units at RiddickHall’s hospital are starting to make room for nonCOVID19 patients — a sign that the curve is beginning to flatten.
“Basketball will eventually come back, but there’s people out here that are dying,” Lee said. “They’re not going to be able to come back. We just have to be grateful for our health, and be thankful for those who are putting their lives on the line to help save others.”