Central Coast nurse returns home after a month of helping patients in New York

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - Orcutt native and nurse Jessica Davis is heading home after working completing a 4-week contract in New York to help at overwhelmed health care facilities.

Davis finished her last shift at a Brooklyn hospital on Thursday, May 28th and will reunite with her husband and daughter on the Central Coast on Saturday, May 30.

We will hear from Davis about her experience in New York tonight on our "Looking for the Helpers" newscast at 6:30p.m.

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.

She 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. Davis started work at a hospital in New York on May 2.