Jennifer Lyn came to the Alabama coast this year because tourism work looked steadier here than almost anywhere else during the pandemic. Between COVID-19 shutdowns and Hurricane Sally, the plan collapsed twice before it ever started.
A year earlier she had been working the off-season in Charleston, South Carolina, before heading back for what should have been her fifth season with a duck-boat tour operation in Seattle. She worked two days, she said, before the company told employees it could not sustain the season and closed.
Two days, then two days again
That is what sent her to the Baldwin County beaches. “I moved to Alabama to work for another tour company here, and I planned everything down to the smallest detail, and when I got here, I worked for two days and they said we need to suspend operations because of COVID,” she said.
She lined up what looked like a more stable job at Adventure Island in Orange Beach. The day she was supposed to start turned out to be the day the hurricane hit.
An officer pointed her to help
Lyn, who asked that her last name not be published, said her housing situation also fell apart as the storm approached, and she was told to leave the room she had been renting. She decided to sleep in her car for a while and was driving around looking for a park to stop in when a police officer pulled alongside her.
“He said well you should go home, and I said well I don’t have one anymore,” she said. Instead of moving her along, she said, the officer connected her with local resources.
The arrangement she landed in is not permanent, but she called it a safe home with people she never would have met otherwise. She credited the first responders she has dealt with on the coast for treating her with what she described as consistent compassion during the worst stretch of her year.