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Woman in South Florida by chance gets COVID-19 vaccine at a Walgreens

Reporter: Morgan Rynor Writer: Jack Lowenstein
Published: Updated:
Marsha Leoni, 77, says by a miracle chance she was vaccinated for COVID-19 after a Walgreens announced it had extra doses after vaccinating its employees. Credit: WINK News.

We’ve been reporting about the great lengths people are going to get vaccinated. In Lee County, there have been hundreds of people waiting and camping out in lines for hours.

A lucky 77-year-old woman in South Florida we spoke to went into a Walgreens and walked out having been vaccinated for COVID-19 recently.

For nine months Marsha Leoni isolated herself.

“I thought before, if I got COVID, that it was going to be really a death sentence because I just had stents put in in March, so, you know, I was really afraid,” Leoni explained.

She tried going through the right channels to get vaccinated for days to no avail.

“My message to everybody is to persevere wherever they’re offering the shot,” Leoni said.

Then, she got lucky. She calls what happened to her a miracle.

“Walgreens was inoculating their employees, and they had a little leftover,” Leoni said. “So they made an announcement, ‘We have a little leftover, and if you’re here by five, you can get it,’ so we got on line, and we got it.”

Leoni got the shot in the arm.

“I feel so lucky, and I feel so blessed, and you know knowing the right people, being able to be at a certain place at the right time,” Leoni said.

Walgreens responded to us about what allowed it to vaccinate others outside of its employees. At least one other place this same type of thing has been reported was in Louisville, Kentucky.

“We experienced an isolated situation in which the amount of vaccine doses requested by facilities exceeded the actual need,” Walgreen shared in a statement.

Leoni hopes she is a day closer to hugging her 10 grandchildren again. She says she is scheduled to receive her second booster shot at the same Walgreens Jan. 16.

“I feel like I have one foot into the new world, the new life now,” Leoni said. “That’s what the vaccination kind of means to me; that it’s, you know, I’m heading in the right direction where I’ll be able to hug my grandchildren soon.”

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