Few if any Ojai residents were thrust further into maelstrom of the Covid-19 breakout than Haady Lashkari, Ojai Valley Community Hospital's chief administrator. Lashkari is responsible for the hospital's 300 employees and, by proxy, for the health care for the entire Ojai Valley. Those earliest days in the late winter and early spring of 2020 were met with a determined response: Assessing capacity, briefing key staff repeatedly, supply chain issues, mobilizing ventilators, sending covid cases to Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, the lack of available testing, finding masks, and the stresses of being a front-line responder to this once-in-a-century epidemic. To name a few.

Daily updates meant that some information would change from morning to night. "You make the best decisions you can with the best information you have in that moment. As you get more information, you adjust," he said. CMH was handling as many as 100 cases a day during the pandemic, allowing Ojai's local hospital to handle its critical care patients and maintain some semblance of normality for the crew. There were changes, for example "proning." It would take six or seven people to "prone" a patient - as medical professionals learned that patients got better oxygen saturation lying on their stomachs.

As if that wasn't enough, Lashkari was heading up the hospital's major expansion, making the move into the new facility in June 2020 into the new critical care facility — bringing the total to 100 beds in Ojai, including 25 in the acute care facility. All that while staff, exposed to the virus, were getting sick in waves.

A key part of his job was maintaining staff morale through the dreadful and endless days. "I serve patients by serving my staff," he said.

We also talked about Lashkari's experiences working in his family's restaurant, finding his career through a chance encounter with a hospital administrator who recognized his abundant capacity and professionalism. So Haady gave up his plans for commercial real estate and began his journey into the health care system. We also talked about his young family, his lovely wife, two sons and daughter, their love of Ojai and the challenges of homeschooling. We did not talk about wabi sabi, mirror neurons or Deadwood.