Friday Feel Good Story – Yellow Pine Is Vaccinated

Many years ago when I still owned my cabin in McCall, I would go there on weekend getaways. When I say weekend getaways... I mean get-aways... away from everything and everyone. Part of my weekend detachment from the world included going for long drives on back roads. One particular weekend I got on a dirt road that took me out of cell range and pretty soon I had no idea where I was. An hour later I arrived in Yellow Pine, a town with two restaurants and a gas station. The people were nice and after lunch I drove away never thinking that one day I would see this remote (50 miles of dirt roads into the mountains east of McCall) little town in the news.

Today my heart felt so good to see Yellow Pine in the headlines. It turns out that the 29 residents of the quaint community were eager to get the COVID-19 vaccine but in order for them to do so they would have to make an 8 hour roundtrip to Cascade on an old dirt road now covered with snow.

This is where a paramedic named Sam Jensen and Cascade Medical Chief Medical Nurse Terri Coombs came to the rescue.  The medical professionals embarked on the 50-mile trip and vaccinated 20 residents.

"It's been a godsend for them to come up here twice up here to get it done," Rhonda, a Yellow Pine resident, said in a ktvb interview.

The remaining actually caught up to them on the dirt road.

"They flashed their lights at us, we all pulled over and immunizations were given," Coombs said to a ktvb reporter.

I always talk about #BoiseKind but today I stand corrected, the correct phrase is #IdahoKind