Nick Cripe of Baker City worked for a month at a “mega site” COVID-19 vaccination clinic in New Jersey during most of February 2021.

BAKER CITY — Nick Cripe found himself with some extra time between jobs as a firefighter and paramedic.

“I was back in Baker, just killing time,” said Cripe, 28.

He grew up in Baker City, and graduated from Baker High School in 2011.

He asked at nearby hospitals if he could apply for short-term work, but the paperwork proved to be an obstacle.

To fill his time, Cripe went to work for Appliances & More in Baker City.

“I’d like to do something medical, but it might be nice to take a month off,” he remembers thinking.

That job lasted one day.

When the owner, Jay Wilson, learned about Cripe’s medical background, he suggested Cripe call Chris Arvidson of North Powder.

Arvidson runs Med Transport Inc. and has contracts with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other disaster relief agencies. Right now, those contracts need medical professionals to help at vaccination clinics and “step down” services at hospitals across the country.

Cripe called Arvidson, and the next day Cripe was on an airplane bound for New Jersey.

“It was very random,” Cripe said of how this opportunity came about. “Everything just aligned.”

He left Baker City on Feb. 3, and returned March 6.

Cripe was assigned to a vaccination clinic set up in an Atlantic City convention center — one of several “mega sites” established to administer COVID-19 vaccines.

“The convention center is huge. We used maybe a tenth of it,” he said.

When he arrived, a shift of 10 nurses were giving 400 to 600 shots a day.

Cripe’s unit of 10 paramedics began working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week.

“By the time we left, we were doing 3,600 shots a day,” he said. “Their goal was to get to 4,000 a day.”

Except for about 80 doses, he said they were giving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. A full pharmacy on site stored the vaccine until needed.

The experience, he said, differed greatly from his career as a firefighter/paramedic where he never knew what daily challenges he would encounter.

At the vaccination clinic, he had the same routine every day: he got up at 5:30 a.m., had breakfast at 6:30 a.m., arrived at the convention center at 7 a.m., and then gave shots from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.

“It almost seemed like Groundhog Day,” he said, referring to the 1993 Bill Murray film.

It did, however, give him the chance to meet new people.

“I had a lot of good conversations,” he said. “So many people were so thankful for me being there.”

Having a vaccine available, he said, seemed to give people new hope.

“A bunch of people cried — the thought of the world going back to a sense of normalcy,” he said.

And he’s glad he had the chance to help.

“I was honored to do it. It was a great experience,” he said. “There are so many good people in the world. I made some lifelong friends.”

He’s planning to stick around Eastern Oregon and hopes to take more deployments such as this one.

“I think there will be endless opportunities,” Cripe said.