Central Coast nursing student takes final exam at airport on her way to help patients in New York

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. - Orcutt native Jessica Davis was in the final stretch of her nursing program at Santa Barbara Business College when the coronavirus pandemic hit. Her post-graduation plans quickly changed and she gravitated to where she was needed most.

Davis joined the COVID-19 task force in San Luis Obispo, where she helped set up hundreds of beds at an alternate care site at Cal Poly. Around that time, she was contacted by a headhunter who offered her a 4-week contract in New York to help at overwhelmed health care facilities.

Due to an overlap in travel schedules and her final exam date, Davis flew out of California as a nursing student and arrived in New York as a graduate.

She departed San Luis Obispo on Wednesday, April 29. On her layover in Washington, D.C., she and a fellow nursing student took their final exams at the airport before jumping on the last leg of their flight to New York.

They passed.

When asked if she had any hesitation about the offer, she was quick to reply "no."

Davis said that she gets very emotional when she thinks of how exhausted nurses in New York must be and said her husband and teenage daughter supported the decision to go.

Davis begins work on May 2.