Vaccination house call for 106-year-old LA resident

Maria Torres is 106 years old.

Knitting and solving crossword puzzles is how the mother of 12 passes the time in her small apartment in Los Angeles.

For the last couple of weeks, Torres, a native from Guerrero, Mexico who migrated to the U.S. in 1976, had been asking her grandson Frankie Mercado for the COVID-19 vaccine.

Torres: "I heard that someone who gets vaccinated doesn't die soon and that's what I don't want yet. I want to live some more days, whatever God grants me but my will is that: to last more days."

But Mercado couldn't imagine taking his grandmother, who uses a walker, out of the apartment and driving her to a vaccination clinic.

Just getting Torres from her bedroom to the kitchen is an ordeal.

Enter C.J. Bartholomew, a Nurse Manager for CARE Ambulance.

"When I heard, you know, we have this lady who's 106 years old, she survived the last pandemic and she's really not able to leave her house. I figured coming in for a few hours on the weekend is the least I could do."

On February 13 Bartholomew paid Torres a visit to administer the vaccine.

Nurse Bartholomew stayed for 30 minutes after administering the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to observe any reaction in Torres, who is healthy but has type two diabetes.

He emphasized that the house call was a special occasion and as much as they would like to help more people like Torres, their resources are limited. Her grandson was thankful, saying he can't imagine life without the woman who has raised him since he was 5.

Mercado: " I don't want her to die alone. I don't want her to be separated from me. And she's lived this long life, and the last thing I would want for her is to die alone and I can't visit her."

This is the second pandemic Torres has lived through. She was a toddler during the 1918 Spanish flu. With one shot down and another to go, Torres says she hopes family and friends will soon start visiting again.