"It’s really gratifying knowing that you can help save people’s lives. Now that I know how to help, it’s not the kind of thing where I can say, 'I don’t have time to do this anymore.'"
Benjamin Kagan, 14, spent winter break remotely navigating the COVID-19 vaccine system in Florida, where his grandparents became eligible for their shots in early January. When his grandparents in Arizona became eligible for vaccines, he spent hours scouring that state’s various sites and systems for availability.
He secured shots for those grandparents and his grandparents in Indiana. A few weeks later, when the employees at his parents’ wholesale food company, Good to Go Food, became eligible under Illinois’ group 1b, Kagan started tracking down vaccine appointments for them.
“If you’re not super internet savvy, it’s a really hard system to understand,” Kagan told me. “One of my grandparents told me, ‘I don’t know how to refresh a page.’ It’s super difficult information that needs to be processed super quickly.”
In early February, a CBS reporter visited during career day at Francis W. Parker, where Kagan is a freshman, prompting Kagan to tune in to the news that night. That’s where he saw a story about Chicago Vaccine Hunters, a Facebook group created by Chicago resident Roger Naglewski to help connect available vaccine appointments to folks who need them.
“I was like, ‘I have a knack for this,’” Kagan said...read more
