‘Peace out to 2020.’ Tri-Cities firefighter family finds victory despite COVID aftereffects

Julie Webb started the year worrying about animals and is ending the year wondering about her health.

The Tri-Cities Animal Shelter volunteer became deeply involved in the campaign to replace the aging Pasco buildings that house abandoned and lost pets.

But as she celebrates the new shelter’s funding success, she and her husband, Shane Webb, a Kennewick firefighter, are among the thousands of people with lingering symptoms linked to COVID-19.

“2020 is a really great year for me when it comes to animals, otherwise I say, ‘Peace out to 2020,’” she said.

Webb was one of the leaders of #NothingFancyJustFunctional — a Facebook group of supporters of a new Tri-Cities animal shelter.

While the shelter serves Pasco, Richland and Kennewick, Pasco has the primary responsibility of finding a nonprofit to run it and has been organizing the design of a new facility.

Calls for a new shelter date back to at least 2011, and the three cities agreed to work on a replacement after a 2016 study confirmed the need.

The current “A” street location includes three buildings. The main 7,000-square-foot metal building dates to the ’50s. And two outbuildings were added in the ‘70s.

It was operated as a Humane Society shelter until Animal Control took over 20 years ago.

The Facebook group’s members distributed yard signs to members and showed up at city council meetings to plead the case for an updated facility.

Those plans cleared a major hurdle in December, when Richland officials agreed to contribute $2 million to the project. Pasco and Kennewick already have committed funds.

“Our little group is over the moon that this finally happened,” Webb said.

Lingering COVID effects

When she and her husband came down with COVID earlier in the year, they weren’t expecting the long-term effects.

Shane Webb fell ill in late June after coming home from work at the Kennewick Fire Department. His wife developed symptoms soon after.

While both have recovered from the initial infections, the road to full health is ongoing. Sometimes they feel fine, while other days just going out to the mailbox is a struggle.

“This didn’t take my life, but it took the life out of me,” she said. “My 14 days wasn’t as bad. I would go back to that.”

An online support group she has joined started with a couple hundred people and now has more than 10,000 members.

And many of the stories echo her own, as relatively healthy people find themselves continuing to struggle with symptoms.

Her husband also finds he has lingering effects from the disease, such as diminished lung capacity.

It’s a struggle compounded by continually comments from others on how the disease isn’t serious, she said.

“It’s frustrating to see that our community is very mixed,” she said. “I’m really stuck on when people say that 99 percent of people recover. I’m not living my best life right now.”

She continues to hope that people will follow the guidance of health officials and wear their masks and avoid continuing to spread the disease.

She found her volunteer efforts at the animal shelter kept her motivated.

“They’ve been my physical and mental therapy,” she said.

This story was originally published January 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM.