Shelton community feels absence of ‘Don’ Ricardo as he battles COVID-19

Years of hard work building relationships, trust, and networks have made Shelton resident Ricardo Del Bosque into a passionate resource hub with an out-sized impact on his community.

Del Bosque, 59, heads up the Shelton School District Student & Family Resource Center, which connects students and families — especially those who are new to Shelton from Latin America — to resources they need. Del Bosque himself emigrated to the U.S. from Saltillo, Mexico, in the early 1990s, according to his son, who shares his name.

People who know Ricardo Del Bosque often refer to him as “Don” Ricardo, an honorific in Latino communities showing respect and that he’s a community patriarch of sorts.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic intensified his job along with the community’s needs, his family and coworkers say. But, for the last few months, they’ve been without his industrious passion.

In early August, Ricardo was diagnosed with COVID-19 and admitted to Mason General Hospital in Shelton. He’s been engaged in an intense, at times harrowing, battle with the disease caused by the new coronavirus since.

His family says he has stayed in a series of hospitals, suffered a stroke and was on and off a ventilator. He’ll need to learn how to eat, talk, and walk again, according to his daughter-in-law Nicole Del Bosque. As of last week, he remained at a Seattle rehabilitation hospital.

As case numbers surge, the Del Bosque family wanted to share Don Ricardo’s story, in part, hoping that others will take the threat of the virus seriously and take precautions to prevent its spread.

The impact of Don Ricardo’s absence also highlights the vital but sometimes tenuous link between vulnerable populations and the knowledge and resources needed to navigate the pandemic. For many in Shelton, Don Ricardo was that link.

‘A human dynamo’

Del Bosque moved to Washington from Texas about a year after arriving in the U.S., according to his son, and first worked in construction, building skyscrapers in downtown Seattle. His dad’s boss took a liking to him and helped with his immigration papers, he said.

He later worked for Green Hill School, a juvenile detention facility in Chehalis, where his son says he was injured on the job. The Department of Labor and Industries advised him to find less physically strenuous work, the younger Del Bosque said, and he got a job as a paraeducator in Shelton in the late 1990s. About that same time, he became a U.S. citizen, his son said.

Over the years, Don Ricardo’s role in the school district has grown.

On the district website, he’s listed as a “Bilingual Family & Student Support Coordinator.” He doesn’t just connect families with necessities such as food and shelter, but he also acts as a counselor who inspires them to achieve, says Superintendent Alex Apostle.

Del Bosque typically visits homes of families every day, Apostle said. He monitors student academic performance and meets with families to sort through related issues.

Over the last five years, the district’s demographics have “shifted considerably,” Apostle said.

About 28% of students in the district identified as Hispanic at the beginning of the 2014-15 school year, a percentage that rose to almost 34% by the beginning of 2019-20, according to data from the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Apostle said Del Bosque — who he called a “human dynamo” — has become the “go-to person,” and they meet often. Don Ricardo seems sometimes to create entire programs on the spot, Apostle said.

A coworker, McKinney-Vento Liaison Betty Uriostegui, called Del Bosque “the Sun” of their team. The last time she saw him, she said, they were delivering food to families. He was the motivating force behind the district’s “Resources on Wheels” bus, a mid-sized rig purchased to deliver food and other supplies.

The bus was his dream. In all honesty, she said, and the effort is considered “Ricardo on Wheels.”

The younger Ricardo Del Bosque characterized his dad’s approach as “holistic,” harnessing and identifying resources in the medical, school and immigration systems — and extending well beyond a 40-hour week. His dad’s phone rings all the time, and he answers it late into the evening.

His daughter-in-law pointed to his multiple honors, including a regional Washington state Classified Employee of the Year award a decade ago and Unsung Hero honor from the Department of Early Childhood Learning in 2018, and his role helping hundreds apply for the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for free, helping them avoid attorney’s fees.

His roles in the community seem to have no end — he led a Spanish congregation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for roughly five years, his son said, and held other leadership positions within the church after that. He served as a liaison between the Guatemalan government and Shelton when an immigrant was fatally shot by a hunter a decade ago, according to Nicole Del Bosque.

A Facebook group of well-wishers and supporters has grown to include more than 500 people, and a family GoFundMe for help with bills and other needs has raised well over $17,000.

His family, of course, feels a very palpable impact of his absence. They’re grateful to the community, the younger Del Bosque said, and can’t imagine what it would be like for this to happen to a person without such wide support.

Taking precautions against the virus

Don Ricardo had been monitoring hospitalizations and infections in Mason County, and encouraged people to wear masks, wash their hands often, and not gather in crowds, his son said. But he was still delivering supplies and food to people, and people were still coming to his house asking about immigration and seeking other resources.

“He was cautious, but you can only be so cautious,” his son said.

Before March and the pandemic, Superintendent Apostle said district efforts to reach the Hispanic community were really picking up, and he and Del Bosque would even meet for dinners with 15-20 Hispanic parents at a time.

With Don Ricardo in the hospital, the district has needed at least a half dozen people to pitch in to cover his duties, Apostle said.

“Without Ricardo running the show, it’s very difficult to continue those efforts,” he said.

Uriostegui said people looking for help are asking for Ricardo. She’s concerned that some now just aren’t reaching out, because he’s the one they trust.

“The entire community and school district and myself miss Ricardo very, very much, and we’re hoping for his speedy recovery and return, because we need him,” Dr. Apostle said. “We miss him.”

Don Ricardo’s battle with COVID-19

The Olympian was not able to speak directly to any of Don Ricardo’s care providers. His daughter-in-law emailed a timeline of his experience battling COVID-19, which she said is based on his medical records. A reporter then shared the timeline in a phone interview with Dr. Kevin Caserta, Chief Medical Officer for Providence of Southwest Washington.

Caserta is not familiar with Del Bosque’s case, and is not in a position to speculate on his care or specific situation. However, he offered his expertise about specific points in the timeline and said the man’s experience is consistent with a “very unfortunate and extreme example of the harm the virus can cause,” which unfortunately “occurs on a not uncommon basis.”

Del Bosque received his positive test result Aug. 2, according to Nicole Del Bosque, and had been feeling very ill the previous week. The following day, about 11 p.m., he was having trouble breathing and his wife took him to Mason General Hospital.

Del Bosque wrote that her father-in-law’s oxygen levels had dropped to 75 percent. Dr. Caserta told The Olympian doctors want to see levels well into the 90s. A level of 75 percent would indicate the patient wasn’t getting enough oxygen from his lungs into his blood supply and would suggest “somebody who’s really sick.”

Doctors at Mason General determined he was beyond their ability to help, and he was transferred via ambulance to Auburn Regional Medical Center, where doctors tried several treatments — antibiotics, experimental drugs, convalescent plasma — and he experienced a roller coaster of improvements and deterioration.

He developed pneumonia, Del Bosque wrote, and “quickly deteriorated to a new low,” with doctors placing him on a ventilator Aug. 21. A little over a week later, still on a ventilator, he was again transferred, this time to Swedish Medical Center in Seattle. On Sept. 5, doctors performed a tracheostomy, a hole surgeons put in the windpipe to provide an air passage when the usual route for breathing is somehow blocked or reduced.

When someone is on a ventilator, Dr. Caserta said, a tube is placed in their trachea (windpipe). If they’re going to need a ventilator for a long time, that tube can cause damage, he said, so doctors may perform a tracheostomy to put in a more permanent structure.

When doctors tried to wean Del Bosque off a ventilator, his oxygen levels would “plummet,” his daughter-in-law wrote. When he started to “truly ‘wake’” for the first time Sept. 24, it didn’t go well and they had to sedate him, she wrote.

Overnight on Sept. 25, Don Ricardo suffered a stroke. He was transferred to Kindred Hospital in Seattle, which focuses on rehabilitation, on Oct. 7.

Efforts to get him off the ventilator continued, and staff performed physical therapy in his bed while he was awake for a couple hours a day. He suffered secondary pneumonia, Del Bosque wrote, which Dr. Caserta confirmed is not uncommon after someone experiences viral pneumonia.

Finally, this past week, Del Bosque’s family shared that Don Ricardo was mostly off the ventilator. The goal, his son wrote in a text message to The Olympian, is to move him to a “respiratory high-skilled nursing facility” when he’s completely off. For now, they’re aiming for the end of the month.

Dr. Caserta was the initial incident commander for Providence Southwest Washington when the pandemic hit earlier this year. During the phone interview, he emphasized that it’s important for people to understand COVID-19 is much more dangerous than influenza.

“There are a lot of potential complications associated with the virus,” Caserta said. “People die from it every single day. And we are learning a lot about this virus all of the time, and there’s a lot more we need to learn.”

However, the fact that hospital staff take care of COVID-19 patients every day without getting sick shows taking appropriate precautions is vital to staying safe, he said.

“When people maintain the appropriate precautions — the social distancing, masking, appropriate hand hygiene — we know we can nearly stop the spread of COVID-19.”

Understanding disproportionate impact

Evidence indicates people from racial and ethnic minority groups are disproportionately impacted by the ongoing pandemic.

“Long-standing systemic health and social inequities have put many people from racial and ethnic minority groups at increased risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19,” a page on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website reads.

The CDC points to factors such as access to health care and a disproportionate number of people who work in “essential” jobs as contributing to why certain groups have seen higher numbers of COVID-19 cases.

In Mason County, a county spokesperson told The Olympian late last month that approximately 34% of COVID-19 cases had been identified in people who identify as Hispanic, while the U.S. Census Bureau estimates 10.6% of the county’s total population identifies as Hispanic or Latino.

In nearby Thurston County, the most recent data show that while people who identify as Hispanic account for 9% of the county’s total population, they accounted for 30% of its COVID-19 cases as of Oct. 4 (with ethnicity unknown for 29% of diagnosed residents).

Both county health departments have been working to reach Hispanic residents by creating videos and materials in Spanish and other languages, among other efforts.

Making a connection, communicating culture

But Don Ricardo was serving as a personal bridge between resources and the people who need them. At least one local nonprofit organization, Olympia-based CIELO, does similar work on a broader scale.

The organization — which is known by the acronym for Centro Integral Educativo Latino de Olympia — serves a population of immigrants who speak Spanish, Mam, and Q’anjob’al and may not be able to access public assistance because of immigration status or a language barrier.

Executive Director Julio Rios and Outreach Coordinator Dianna Torres Angulo spoke to The Olympian about their work during the pandemic.

The organization already had amped up and adapted services to support immigrants and refugees in the South Sound in response to a growing need, as The Olympian wrote in April. Since then, those services have evolved further.

“It is no secret that the Latino community has been part of the under-served population. We already were facing a lot of disparities when it comes to the service provided,” Rios said. “This is the reality.”

The pandemic has aggravated issues that existed already, such as domestic violence. But the health care system also wasn’t prepared to be “diverse and inclusive,” Rios said, and started delivering services they might’ve thought were available and friendly, but to which the community didn’t respond.

Rios and Torres Angulo describe a gap between agencies offering information and resources, and the people CIELO serves. Filling that gap means not just offering information in the languages community members speak, but making the information culturally relevant.

“We found out that some of the efforts — and, I might say, the honest and sincere, maybe, efforts — from the government were not reaching the community because they were not culturally humble,” Rios said. “They didn’t know what places our community doesn’t like to go, because they don’t feel safe, they feel threatened, they feel not welcome, they feel diminished. ...”

CIELO has worked with local health departments and the state Department of Health to raise Latino voices. It has resulted in creative efforts, such as an informational booth on COVID-19 and testing at a flea market in Chehalis, where news is known to spread, Rios said. Familiar with the online platforms used most by local Latinos, Torres Angulo said, they know to broadcast messages on WhatsApp, YouTube Music, and Spotify.

They’re working with North Thurston and Shelton high schools, offering tutoring to keep students from dropping out because they can’t understand their coursework. They have created bilingual coloring books that include community resources alongside trendy characters.

At the state level, Torres Angulo said CIELO has helped the Department of Health make survey questions culturally relevant, so they can gather meaningful information about how the pandemic has impacted farm workers. The organization is also helping distribute masks directly to those workers in Mason and Lewis counties.

“We see a little crack in the system that is letting us voice our concerns, and we see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel, because now we might be heard,” Rios said.

In the footsteps of a giant

Rios is new to the area, but said he has learned of Del Bosque and his work. Torres Angulo said she also became familiar with Del Bosque through word of mouth, in sort of a “the man, the myth, the legend” way.

“He’s already been doing a lot of the work that we’re hoping to do as an organization, in Mason County,” Torres Angulo said, specifically on the education front. Advocates had already been working there with victims of crime and domestic violence. When Del Bosque got sick, CIELO was motivated to ask how they could help, and that’s how the partnership with Shelton High School began.

Rios wishes for a speedy recovery for Don Ricardo. He said he sees his impact as a “challenge” for CIELO to emulate his drive.

“He’s a giant,” Rios said, later adding, “We want to get, like, a transfusion of his drive, and his passion, and his love for the community. Because we need that, CIELO needs that.”