Maricopa County Emergency Management Office

Start Date: 10/27/2020

Description:

Rich Peel sent me text message on Tuesday morning to confirm I had some teams together for Wednesday. I told him I was still working on it, as nobody else had responded yet definitely. I contacted several other teams that had not been on BAND to check their availability and Sharon Martin let me know she was available to go immediately Tuesday am if that worked. I asked Rich if he'd like the two of us to come on down and he eagerly said YES!! Sharon and I scrambled and were literally there within an hour. Rich wanted to be sure we were still coming back Wednesday as he had employees planning on our visit then also. He said two teams would be better for the second day rather the 3-4 he had originally asked me for. Staff was all very busy with constant meetings going on, so was not a huge amount of people free to visit with.
Diane Spence responded that she could come Wednesday. We saw maybe 15 at most. It was slower than previous day, and the 2 of us had downtime between visits.
We were seated in an open area in middle of all the cubicle desks and the staff came around a couple at a time, as their work permitted. Diane and I and the dogs were introduced at a Virtual meeting going on, involving many Doctors, and other professional working with COVID. The dogs brought smiles to them all! Everyone wore masks, hand sanitizer was readily available and we were able to keep some distance apart. Staff very welcoming and so happy to see the dogs, telling us they greatly needed this and appreciated our being there to help de-stress them a little bit as they had been there working COVID issues for past 8 months.
Rich knows all about the HOPE dogs from prior events and knew all three dogs. He asked us to come back in the future. I left him my contact info and told him we'd be happy to return anytime. Very informal and easy visit that was both welcomed and appreciated.

Agency: Emergency Management Office - Maricopa County
Teams:

Sharon Martin and Abby on 10/27, Diane Spence and Chloe on 10/28


Region: