Remembering 'hope': First Californian vaccinated against COVID-19 reflects on a year gone by
LOS ANGELES — Helen Cordova has celebrated two COVID-19 vaccinations in her family this month.
Her mother got a booster on her 66th birthday, then headed to a boisterous family dinner at Chili's, something that wasn't possible last winter when both indoor and outdoor dining were banned.
A few days later, Cordova's newly eligible 5-year-old niece got her first dose after being promised a lollipop.
Those shots — among more than 62 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that have now been administered in California — were so easy to get that they were practically mundane.
How things have changed since Cordova, a 33-year-old nurse practitioner from the San Fernando Valley, got her own Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
A year ago this month, Cordova became the first person in California outside a clinical trial to get a COVID-19 vaccination, making history at a time when the virus was overwhelming and the first precious doses were limited to those most at risk: older people and front-line healthcare workers.
