‘My parents’ worries became my own’
Amid COVID-19 hardships, teens work double duty
It was never a question that Stephanie Contreras-Reyes would take the most rigorous AP classes her high school offers. It was never a question that she would juggle these classes with a slate of impressive extracurriculars and weekly volunteering at two hospitals. It was never a question that she would apply to California’s top colleges, including Stanford.
And when her dad lost his factory job in March at the onset of the pandemic, it was never a question that the 17-year-old would do whatever was needed to keep her family afloat.
Her parents do not speak English, so she researched how to sign up her family for food and rental assistance at various community organizations. She held garage sales on the weekends, selling blouses and shoes from her South Los Angeles home and dropping off catalogs for Tupperware — which she helps her mom sell — to family friends.
But it wasn’t enough. So she told her parents that she wanted to take on shifts at the embroidery factory where her mom worked.
“Tell your boss I’m ready, I can do this,” Stephanie, the eldest of four children, said to her mom at the dinner table. The next week, mother and daughter stood side-by-side at the industrial sewing machines, lining up snapback hats that would soon be stitched with the logos of local sports teams.
Stephanie’s AP U.S. history teacher, Heidi Mejia, will tell you that her student is remarkable. She’s at the top of her class,
the first in her family to get this far in school. She is also among an increasing number of teenagers who have started working or taken on more work to help their financially struggling families during the pandemic, often carrying overwhelming loads that can bring on anxiety attacks, bouts of depression and failing grades, their school counselors say.
“My parents’ worries became my own,” Stephanie said.
Mejia said that this semester, about five students each period reach out daily to say that they’ll be missing class because they are working. “And those are just the students that are comfortable letting me know what’s happening,” she said.
Teenagers supporting families
Rachel Varty, Stephanie’s
college counselor at Orthopaedic Hospital Medical Magnet High School, said students as young as 14 have been requesting work permits.
A quarter of San Francisco International High School’s 64 seniors are working 20 to 40 hours a week, said head counselor Oksana Florescu — more than double the usual number of working seniors. She meets with these students over Zoom to coach them on how to persuade their bosses to give them school-friendly schedules.
“I give them talking points: ‘This is my last year of school; I’m trying to help my family,’ ” Florescu said.
Some students launched into work at the very start of the pandemic.
After her mother lost her full-time restaurant job last March, Isis Mejia-Duarte, a senior at Woodrow
Wilson Senior High School in El Sereno, began helping her mom deliver Amazon Fresh and InstaCart groceries.
They could make deliveries more quickly as a team, ultimately fulfilling more orders and making more money. And Isis didn’t feel comfortable with her mom delivering packages in downtown L.A. alone at night.
“I love my mom and don’t want to see her suffer,” Isis said. “I’m happy to help in the little ways I can.” She also was taking eight online classes and cooking and cleaning for her family. And she was still earning straight A’s.
Then, in December, Isis, her mom and her grandmother fell ill with COVID19. Isis applied to college from her sickbed, sometimes staying up until 5 a.m. to finish her sketchbook and portfolio for CalArts in
Valencia, her dream school.
Despite their lingering fatigue, the pressure to generate income was immense following three weeks of sickness. So after testing negative for the coronavirus, Isis and her mom returned to the crowded Amazon warehouse in mid-January.
They waited in line for two hours for a tall stack of packages and loaded the goods into Isis’ aunt’s Nissan Rogue. Mother and daughter dashed to elevators and up countless flights of stairs, carrying bags of groceries and cases of bottled water. After a while, Isis’ mom hit a wall, so Isis picked up the slack. She was drenched in sweat and dizzy with exhaustion by the time they were done.
Luis Leon, Isis’ classmate at Woodrow Wilson High School, began taking orders at a McDonald’s drive-through in August after both of his parents were temporarily laid off. Luis’ $400 monthly paycheck puts food on the table and keeps the lights on. Work is an escape from the drudgery of lockdown, and he enjoys interacting with customers, though he does worry about catching the virus.
Luis describes himself as an average student in normal times, a happy-golucky type with boundless energy. But working 20 to 30 hours a week has taken a toll. Between his job and watching his two younger siblings, it’s hard to muster the motivation for academics, especially after a long work shift. He often feels drowsy and sad. In December, he was failing most of his classes.
“If I’m being honest,” Luis said, “sometimes I wish I could just relax and be a teen.”
One recent evening, Luis reached his limit. Finals were due — he had stayed up until 3 a.m. the night before writing a paper — and so were his college applications. As he stared at his computer screen with its numerous open tabs, he felt himself shut down. “My brain fried,” he said. He had a splitting headache and a fever. The next morning, he was unable to take his English final and asked for an extension.
Luis was relieved when L.A. Unified School District announced just before the holidays that students would have until the end of January to bring up their failing grades. And he was able to turn in his college applications.
“My friends have asked if I will drop out,” said Luis, who wants to study business and become a real estate agent. “But I can’t. I don’t want my parents to see me that way. I’ll be their first son to finish high school. I want to go to college and make them proud.”
“We’re testing the waters. We didn’t want to end up quarantined in a foreign country or not allowed back in the United States. This felt like a safe place to go, where we were still in the United States.”
— Cheryl Drayer on heading to Maui, Hawaii
When the coronavirus hit, Jim and Cheryl Drayer, 69 and 72, canceled all their planned travel and hunkered down in their home in Dallas.
But earlier this month, the Drayers both received the second dose of their COVID-19 vaccinations. And in March, armed with their new antibodies, they are heading to Maui for a long overdue vacation.
Across the United States, older people have been among the first in line to receive their COVID-19 vaccinations. And among hotels, cruise lines and tour operators, the data is clear: Older travelers are leading a wave in new travel bookings. Americans over 65, who have had priority access to inoculations, are now newly emboldened to travel. For the silver haired, it’s a silver lining.
“We’ve very willingly been compliant with masking and social distancing, and have basically lived inside of our bubble here in Dallas,” Jim Drayer said. “We haven’t been inside a restaurant in a year. So we’re anxious to get out now and do things a little more safely.”
At the Foundry Hotel in Asheville, North Carolina, an 87-room luxury hotel housed in what was once a steel factory for the Biltmore Estate, reservations made with the hotel’s AARP promotional rate were up 50% last month. Aqua-Aston Hospitality, a Honolulu-based company with resorts, hotels and condos in its portfolio, reports that senior-rate bookings climbed nearly 60% in January.
The Drayers, who have gone gorilla trekking in Africa and done adventure travel in India, Israel and Egypt, admit that their trip to Hawaii, which they booked through the members-only vacation club, Exclusive Resorts, is something of a baby step. (The vacation club reports that more than 50% of their current bookings are vacations for members over 60.)
“We’re testing the waters,” Cheryl Drayer said. “We didn’t want to end up quarantined in a foreign country or not allowed back in the United States. This felt like a safe place to go, where we were still in the United States.”
That sense of safety is partly because Hawaii, with its mandatory quarantine and contact tracing, has managed the pandemic well. The couple feel confident that if they were to face any health issues while on the island, they wouldn’t be stymied by an overburdened health system.
“We’re traveling to a destination that, by all the numbers, is safer than where we live right now,” said Jim Drayer. “It feels like our bubble has cracked open a little a bit.”
Alice Southworth, 75, was also looking for a post-vaccine travel destination in a place that was still taking COVID-19 precautions seriously, and didn’t push her too far out of her comfort zone.
A semiretired psychologist, she has continued to see a handful of patients throughout the pandemic, but hasn’t ventured beyond her hometown of McLean, Virginia, in more than a year. She also hasn’t been able to use an indoor gym or attend her beloved water aerobics classes, so as soon as she received the first dose of the vaccine, she booked a visit to Hilton Head Health, a wellness resort in South Carolina, where she’ll have access to a full range of fitness classes and activities. And when she arrives March 28, she’ll be fully vaccinated.
Older people are more eager to travel in 2021 than other age groups and also more likely to link the timing of their travel to when they receive their vaccinations, according to a January survey conducted by the travel agency network Virtuoso. In the study, 83% of respondents over 77 said they were more ready to travel in 2021 than in 2020, and 95% of the same group said they would wait to travel until they received their vaccine.
For travelers in their 60s, 70s and 80s, said Conor Goodwin, corporate marketing manager of Charlestowne Hotels, the ticking of the clock is another strong motivation to book as soon as an inoculation makes it safe.
“The 65-plus demographic is losing out on their golden years and they’re understandably eager to get back out there,” he said.
Some older travelers are even opting to finally book those big-ticket dream trips. Fernando Diez, who owns Quasar Expeditions, a luxury cruise operator in the Galápagos Islands, says that in December, when front-line health care workers were among the very first Americans to receive vaccines, he saw a wave of requests for trip information from doctors and nurses.
Since Jan. 1, however, 70% of his booking inquiries have come from guests over the age of 65 — in previous years, that number was closer to 40%.
Most inquiries are for travel from June onward.
The tourism industry, battered by the pandemic, is now getting a muchneeded boost from this new surge. Hotels and resorts, which have faced recordlow occupancy throughout the pandemic, are wholeheartedly embracing the fresh wave of travelers, with many rolling out new programming and features geared toward their oldest demographic.
At the Marker Key West Harbor Resort, which sits on two lush acres in the Florida Keys, transactions from guests over the age of 55 were 70% higher last month than in December 2020, translating to a 41% increase in spending.
Allie Singer, the resort’s director of sales and marketing, said the jump is almost certainly coming from newly vaccinated seniors.
The resort responded by bringing back programming that had taken a hiatus during the pandemic but was popular with older visitors in the past, including aqua yoga — which can relieve joint pain and arthritis — and a 5 p.m. “welcome reception” on the resort’s pool deck with appetizers and live music.
“It’s very attractive to the senior crowd at that hour,” she said.