Gianna Nino-Tapias world as a first-year medical student is a chaotic mashup of virtual classes, anatomy labs and late-night, marathon study sessions. But life for the 24-year-old was drastically different just a few months ago.

Weeks after earning a masters degree in epidemiology in June, and two months before starting Stanford Medical School, Nino-Tapias returned home to Washington state to pick blueberries alongside her family after losing two jobs during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

Earning $3.50 for every gallon of blueberries she picked, Nino-Tapias rose at 3 a.m. each day to make the one-hour drive to a farm in Paterson, a town near the Oregon border. She would start picking the days harvest by 5 a.m.

Dressed daily in several layers, long sleeves, a face covering, a baseball cap and tattered sneakers, Nino-Tapias turned to the fields to make a living. Its a place shes known since she was 14.

I still had a lot of bills and things going on so I needed to find a job, she said. It was exciting and also a little disappointing ... but at the end of the day I was thankful that I was able to find a job, especially a job with my family.

Nino-Tapias straddles two worlds. At Stanford, wealth, privilege and education can afford many students endless opportunities. In the fields, farmworkers harvest up to 60 hours per week in unforgiving weather, often skipping bathroom breaks to pick more crops and showing up to work no matter the circumstance, even when theyre feeling ill or experiencing possible symptoms of the coronavirus.

Nino-Tapias story went viral over the summer after she tweeted photos from the fields. In one image, two white buckets brimmed with freshly-picked blueberries her harvest for the day. How much do you pay for your blueberries? she asked her followers.

As a low-income, first-generation Latina the daughter of a Mixtec woman from Oaxaca Nino-Tapias humble beginnings inspired in her a desire to excel in school and serve her community.

But her story also highlights the inequities that farmworkers have faced for decades, particularly as the pandemic rages on. She has seen those inequities play out in her family and in the lives of those that she has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with in the fields.

A lot of the things that I have seen in the fields and the health disparities the joint pain, the back pain and all of the things that you experience in the fields that was all seared into my mind and made me think, I want to serve my community as a medical practitioner, Nino-Tapias said.

When the pandemic hit in March and millions of residents across the Bay Area were ordered to shelter in place as businesses shut down, Nino-Tapias said she lost her job at Lush Cosmetics in the Stanford Mall. Stanford also shut down that month, which meant Nino-Tapias could no longer work at the universitys Native American Cultural Center, where she was a librarian and programming assistant.

She said she applied for several contact tracing positions, identifying people who might have been infected with the coronavirus, but did not hear back. Facing mounting school bills she paid for her masters degree on her own Nino-Tapias went home to work in a place that shaped her identity.

The days felt long, she said. It was hard because we had to start doing preparations for medical school so I was having to do modules and readings. I would have to come home, help my mom get everything ready (for the following day) and then do my work.

On Fridays, Nino-Tapias participated in a health journal club as part of Stanfords Leadership in Health Disparities program, in which incoming med students discussed academic articles about the social determinants of health. At first, Nino-Tapias called in from the fields through Zoom, but that became too hectic.

She stopped working on Fridays in order to focus on the journal club.

Farmworkers experience a multitude of socioeconomic and health disparities that have only worsened in recent months. As a vulnerable population, they are among the essential workers most devastated by the pandemic and account for a significant number of infections in agricultural regions like Sonoma, Monterey and Mendocino counties.

Nearly 168,000 farmworkers across the United States, including more than 12,600 in California, have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to data compiled by Purdue University.

Gabriela Diaz, a Cloverdale resident who works on a farm in Sonoma County, said she felt nervous working while most people sheltered in place.

We were all at work putting ourselves at risk while the rest of the world was home, said Diaz, 34. We were here, afraid of getting infected. We were really scared and nervous. At that point we just put our health in Gods hands and thats it. There was nothing left to do but work.

Several factors put farmworkers at an elevated risk of contracting the virus, including harvesting in close groups making it impossible to maintain a distance from peers living in overcrowded housing and not immediately seeking medical care due to lack of health insurance or fear of deportation, according to community advocates and researchers.

Farmworkers who may experience symptoms of the coronavirus dont always alert their employers because they cannot afford to miss work, they said.

No one is going to say that they are showing signs or symptoms because they need the money and they need to go into work, Nino-Tapias said. If they had anything going on, theyre not going to self-report that.

Nino-Tapias life experiences have defined her path toward medicine. Growing up, she often stepped in as an interpreter for her mother, Susana Tapia, who does not speak English. When her mothers friends had doctors appointments or gave birth to a child, Nino-Tapias mother would often send her to interpret on their behalf.

It was an incredible opportunity and I loved serving my community, she said. In my community, I also saw a lot of doctors who farmworkers could not identify with, so I hope that one day Ill be able to come back and serve my own farmworker community.

Black and Latino health care providers are more likely to have positive and productive interactions with patients who share the same cultural backgrounds, said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, an epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist at Stanford, and one of Nino-Tapias mentors.

We are really disproportionately underrepresented in the health care workforce and this is true across the country as well, Maldonado said. Somebody like Gianna is a perfect example of an individual who is going to contribute greatly. ... This is what we would like to see happen in all diverse populations.

But as a student who started medical school during a pandemic that has killed more than 228,000 Americans and kept millions of people confined to their homes for months, Nino-Tapias has struggled to adjust to her new normal.

About five weeks into the semester, she drove back to Washington to be with family and continue her virtual classes from home.

My mental health was not doing well, Nino-Tapias said. It was very isolating and I didnt have a roommate at that point. I think a lot of the struggles for our class was that we were in our rooms all the time all the libraries are closed, everything is closed and so it became like us being in our rooms 24 hours a day. The smoke from the wildfires at one point became unbearable and so we couldnt even be outside.

Nino-Tapias has since returned to Stanford. While most of her classes are virtual, she attends a weekly anatomy lab on campus. The university also opened some classrooms so that students can take Zoom courses together at a distance, she said. And she recently got a therapy dog, Roxy, who gets long walks between classes.

On the day she took to Twitter over the summer, Nino-Tapias said she simply wanted to share a slice of her life on what was a particularly difficult day. She was struggling to fill enough buckets to make minimum wage.

She credits her mother for instilling her pride in being a farmworker.

She was the one who was willing to take me to the field when I was 14 and helped me not see it in a negative way, but rather a way to learn about hard work and inspire me to really want me to get an education so that one day I wouldnt have to go back.

Tatiana Sanchez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tatiana.sanchez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TatianaYSanchez

Read more:
Stanford med student lost two jobs during the coronavirus pandemic. So she picked blueberries to make a living - San Francisco Chronicle