As Hawaii marks the five-year anniversary of the start of COVID-19 outbreaks in the isles and health-related shutdowns, for some the pandemic was a blip, a small notation in their medical charts.

But others view their COVID-19 experience as a deep wound that has yet to heal and is forming scars. Those suffering from long COVID are still battling the lingering effects of the virus, while those who lost friends or family members to the disease continue to mourn.

The pandemic-related stay-at-home orders and other disruptions, which began March 25, 2020, also caused longer-­term mental health and economic implications. Fallout even now is occurring from the measures implemented to curtail in-person activities to mitigate the spread of the virus.

Social distancing underscored the importance of human bonds and personal interactions, drawing some family and friends closer. But the isolation caused depression in others who were cut off from the human experience and are still struggling to find the social skills to connect to others.

Students have returned to classroom learning but many are finding it difficult to catch up after falling behind during the pandemic-era of distance learning.

Like many other aspects of modern life, the workplace was irretrievably changed by the pandemic. Zoom and video conferences are here to stay and work-from-home policies are commonplace, although some employers including the U.S. government are now focused on returning workers to the office.

And with all of the social-distancing and safety measures, especially travel quarantines, instituted during the pandemic, Hawaii’s economy was one of the last to achieve near-recovery from the pandemic.

Although the COVID-19 crisis may be over in Hawaii, the residual affects continue to disrupt lives across the isles.

Raechelle “Rae” Villanueva

Raechelle “Rae” Villanueva, a 42-year-old Kaimuki resident who once ran marathons, has trouble walking short distances and is anxiously awaiting a disability parking pass.

Villanueva was a decorated public school teacher and high-energy mother of two when she first caught COVID-19 in January 2022. She was vaccinated and boosted against the virus but still suffers from chronic pain, inflammation and neurological symptoms such as sensitivity to light, migraines and brain fog.

“The month before I caught COVID I ran the marathon. I ran my fastest time at Diamond Head two days before I got sick,” she said. “Everybody joked that I’d be the last person to get COVID because I was so healthy. When I got COVID, the doctors kept telling me that I’d be fine and everybody kept saying you can return to work after five days.”

She forced herself to go back to teaching after calling out sick for three weeks but said her symptoms lingered and worsened. Villanueva now is undergoing regular COVID-19-related medical care, but despite treatment has even experienced bouts of stroke-like neurological deficits, spasms and convulsions.

Last summer, she finally made the painful decision to quit teaching full time. Villanueva now works part time as a casual hire tutoring kids in reading and supporting teachers. But she is struggling to regain the life she had before long COVID.

“I’ve been told that I may never be the same again and I’m coming to terms with that. It’s a grieving process,” she said. “The vaccine did its job. It’s not about deaths anymore. But honestly, I feel like I’m dying a slow death. I don’t feel good and I want to feel good again.”

Angela Keen

Long COVID sufferer Angela Keen has finally begun to heal but occasionally still needs brain treatments to combat lingering symptoms.

Keen, 56, works as director of provider relations and marketing/communications for Brain Health Hawaii and also volunteers at The Queen’s Medical Center’s Long-COVID Clinic to help others who are undergoing this longest of journeys.

Keen, one of the first people in Hawaii to get COVID-19 and a driving force in the controversial Kapu Quarantine Breakers group, said COVID-19 remains a polarizing issue, even in Hawaii’s mostly “blue state” community. She said she has been bullied by people who do not recognize COVID-19 as an illness, even though Hawaii’s death toll from the disease topped 2,000 people.

“That’s why I believe it’s so important to share our stories,” she said. “People need to know that they are not alone.”

Keen said she tried many different COVID-19 medical treatments, but it took brain therapy to rid her of the worst of her symptoms, which ranged from trouble breathing, brain fog and fatigue to severe depression and suicidal thoughts.

She also found purpose in Kapu Quarantine Breakers, which sought to bring awareness to those who were not following COVID-19-related quarantines, mask mandates or bans on large gatherings.

Keen said the group served a valuable purpose because it protected the most vulnerable in Hawaii from catching COVID-19, which affects people differently.

Keen said her husband, Norman Tabije, recovered quickly from his COVID-19 infection, but she experienced two bouts with long COVID, and her dog, Scooter, a silky Maltese, had to undergo surgery after catching COVID-19 from her, causing his lung to blister and collapse.

“Scooter is alive today and happy and healthy too,” Keen said with a smile, but a shadow crosses her face as she remembers a time when everything felt too heavy to bear.

“I would record video messages to my mom and send them to her in the middle of the night. I was worried that I wouldn’t wake up,” she said.

Juli Womack

Juli Womack, 68, of Pearl City, still remembers the helplessness she felt when her 51-year-old nephew Marcus Baricuatro was dying at Maui Memorial Medical Center from COVID-19 and social-distancing requirements meant she had to say goodbye on a video call.

“We had been told that he was getting better and they were going to move him to a recovery room, and the next thing you know my niece texts me that he is on a ventilator,” Womack recalled. “The nurses allowed us to speak to him on FaceTime. Everybody was saying that they loved him, but he couldn’t speak back. That’s the last memory that I have of him, and I hate that.”

Shortly after, Womack remembers finding out via text that her beloved nephew had died Aug. 21, 2021. She chose not to travel to Maui during the pandemic because as a kupuna she was scared of catching it herself. She took early retirement from Whole Foods for the same reason.

“Now there are tests and shots that you can get or not. At the time we still didn’t know much about COVID. I remember seeing on the news one day where they were counting bodies and they had nowhere to store them,” Womack said. “People were like products on a shelf. I hate that Marcus was a statistic.”

Her nephew’s death hit her hard because of the closeness they had shared. Womack said she was just a teenager when Baricuatro was born, so the two grew up together.

“He was like a brother to me, but he always respected me as an auntie,” she said. “He taught my daughter Kodi how to ride a bike when she was 5 or 6. It’s a little thing, but his patience and encouragement made all the difference.”

She said Baricuatro’s death left a huge void in their family, who later went through the Aug. 8, 2023, Maui wildfires. Womack said Baricuatro’s widow and children lost their home.

“You can’t even finish grieving and, boom, here comes another thing,” she said. “I often think if Marcus had been here during the wildfires what he would say or do. He would have been so heartbroken. He worked so hard for the (timeshare) property (where he worked), his family and his community. No matter who you were, Marcus cared for you. He was a truly remarkable human — a class act, who embodied the true meaning of aloha.”

Brenda Reichel

Brenda Reichel, 66, just returned to work in the jewelry industry some five years after her own long COVID illnesses and government shutdowns forced her to shutter her 37-year-old business.

Reichel, the sole employee of Brenda’s Jewelry and Imports, lost income when private jewelers were ruled nonessential operations during the pandemic lockdowns, and she struggled during periods of reopening due to other COVID-19-related challenges.

She first caught the virus Feb. 28, 2020, and said she got it twice more, the last time just a year or so ago. Each time, Reichel said, the symptoms lingered, and she is still working with doctors because she is not completely well today.

“I didn’t have any other employees working so if I was sick and I wasn’t there, there wasn’t any income,” Reichel said. “There was a brief period in November 2020 when we were allowed to open for a little bit and then someone was let out of jail because of COVID and hit seven or eight businesses. He took $15,000 in items from my store.”

Reichel said she lost the lease for her business within two years of the pandemic happening and nearly lost her home after the loss in income forced her to put her mortgage in forbearance.

“It was very hard to keep everything afloat and juggle all of the balls,” she said. “For those who suffer from long COVID, like me, this is still a big deal.”

The losses were on top of continued fallout from the 2018 false ballistic missile alert in Hawaii, caused by a state emergency management worker who pushed the wrong button in the emergency operation center. She said the incident frightened her then-­boyfriend, James Sean Shields, so much that he suffered a heart attack in front of her.

“It was horrible. He was actually dead for 11 minutes. We got the thing on our phones and we never got the message that the missile was defunct,” she said. “He has moved on. He is now married and he is in Texas. He is taking care of himself and his wife is taking care of him and that’s a good thing. ”

Reichel said long-term COVID-19, the false missile alert, and all of the other struggles she has endured, including past battles with other severe illness and allergic reactions, have taught her that “you just have to keep going,” and that it is important to “renew your purpose each day and remember why you are here.”

Ysabelle Bondocoy

Ysabelle “Izzy” Bondocoy, 23, recently embarked on her first career job as a medical assistant at the Fertility Institute of Hawaii and hopes in the next two years to apply to medical school so she can become an obstetrician/gynecologist.

Bondocoy is back in the driver’s seat after COVID-19 disruptions, especially the move to distance learning, which initially crushed her hopes and dreams. She was a senior at Damien High School when the pandemic broke out, and students were sent home to take online-only classes.

Bondocoy said the distractions of living in a multigenerational home made it more difficult to focus on her studies. She also grew depressed from the isolation and was saddened when pandemic restrictions canceled her prom and all of the traditional senior class activities, including marching across a stage while draped in lei for commencement ceremonies.

“We had an online graduation in May 2020. We were all very disappointed and bummed to have those rites of passage ripped away from us, but we also knew it was a global pandemic so there was nothing much that we could do about it,” she said.

Bondocoy had planned to enroll at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, but in-person classes were canceled so she went to the University of Hawaii and took online classes at home. She was able to return to a hybrid lab class in early 2021 but said UH did not fully return to in-person learning until around the spring of 2022.

She said she experienced great joy when her UH graduation was held in-person. That moment was in sharp contrast to earlier days of the pandemic, which she remembers as “a darker time.”

Bondocoy said she and her parents recognized the toll COVID-19 could take on a person’s mental health after a high school classmate took his own life. Toward the end of the COVID-19 crisis, she started seeing a psychiatrist to help her “with her transition back to normal life.”

“Overcoming disappointment and grief has made me a stronger person,” Bondocoy said. “Things happen in life and we must improvise, adapt and make the best of a bad situation.”