Physician and Ducks Fan Loe Is a Hero to COVID Patients on Both Coasts

When the call came, Stephanie Loe knew exactly what she had to do.
With the world turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic, Loe had already been taking it on as an Emergency Medicine Physician in Moreno Valley, helping to treat a disease that came with so much uncertainty.

A medical mission trip scheduled for March to Rwanda and Honduras was cancelled because of the pandemic, so Dr. Loe spent that time caring for the sick here at home by spearheading treatment plans and keeping her workers safe with proper PPE. As an Assistant Director for Disaster Medicine, she also worked with the CDC and County Public Health Department on methods for treating the disease.
When California Governor Gavin Newsom reached out in April to medical personnel in his state to help out in New York City - where the pandemic had hit especially hard - Loe was one of the first to volunteer.
"I signed up right away," she says. "I really wanted to go, and I was just hoping I would get selected," she says. "I really know no fear or trepidation about things like that. It's just become second nature."
Loe, a Southern California native and longtime Ducks fan, was thrust into an unfamiliar situation in New York, where she was among 20 or so medical workers assigned to different area hospitals. She lived in a hotel designed specifically for medical personnel and rode near-empty subways to and from Elmhurst Hospital in Queens and later North Central Bronx to work daily 12-hour shifts. She'd get back to the hotel exhausted with chafed ears and long-lasting red indentations on her face from the masks and goggles.
"It was," she understates, "completely different than what I'm used to."

Although she is an emergency medicine physician by trade, she was assigned to the Intensive Care Unit, because so many patients were placed on life support and there was a shortage of physicians to care for them. As was the case in many hospitals in the area, every floor of the building was converted into an ICU, and Loe had to familiarize herself with ventilator settings, specific diseases and how organ systems are managed in that setting.
"It was very out of my comfort zone, but it really made me grow into a more knowledgeable doctor, and the disease itself was quite eye-opening," she says. "Obviously, I've seen bad diseases in my whole life, but this one was a little bit different because there was just so much unknown about it at the time. Trying to manage all of that was definitely a challenge, but I was amazed to see how New York did it. The resident physicians all hit the ground running, took care of all their patients, no matter what their specialties were. I don't think it would have gone as well if, if you didn't have the staff and the fact that people stepped up out of their comfort zone really means wonders. It was amazing."
Loe credits her toughness and value of teamwork to her family upbringing and her background as an athlete and sports fan. Her mother Rachelle is a pediatric oncology nurse and her father Tim was a respiratory therapist before passing away in 2018. Both parents inspired Stephanie to explore a career in the medical field, but it was her dad who helped instill a passion for emergency medicine.
"He would always step up and take charge in chaotic and unexpected situations," Loe says. She tells the story from years ago when she and other kids were inner tubing down a mountain, and one of the kids broke their leg. "My dad went up right away and was like, 'Hey, I want you to stay calm. I'm going to help you.' And you know, my sister and I would just be looking back just in awe, like how he would just take control of a situation. I always was always amazed at how we could do that. I mean, things like that happened all the time."

A love for sports was also passed onto Stephanie by her dad, and she grew up as a competitive gymnast and soccer player (with Dad as coach). "He had four girls and I really think deep down he wanted some boys," Stephanie laughs. "He was a tough coach, he definitely was, but he always expected us to try our best and he made winners out of us."
Stephanie grew up not far from Anaheim, so her dad would frequently take her and the girls to Ducks and Angels games. "He would teach us the rules and say, 'See how this was a bad decision?' or 'You see this teamwork and the communication?' and he would always point those things out. I think that was just his way of teaching us."
Her dad used those games, and sports in general, as a way to impart lessons about life and the importance of focus, practice, communicating with teammates, resilience and confidence in any situation.
"Something I've learned that totally came from my dad was that you don't grow unless you're out of your comfort zone," Loe says. "It's so nice sometimes to just be in this bubble, but if you really want to grow, you have to go out there and do uncomfortable things. Emergency medicine, and medicine in general, is uncomfortable. You never know what's going to come in the door, and you have to be prepared for everything. So I've always been the type of person to take risks and go out there and see things for myself. Even though there may be some danger involved or I may look stupid, you've got to put it out there."

That has been especially relevant in the past several months. "With COVID for me, it was, 'I need to be out there. I can do this. I'm strong enough to do this. I know there are some risks, but this is what I love. This is what I was born to do.'"
She's saved countless lives, but she admits her resolve has been tested plenty in the past several months, especially in trying to comfort the families of loved ones who have succumbed to the disease.
"Obviously in emergency medicine, I'm used to seeing death all the time," she says, "But this was an unusual situation because to have to see a patient dying and knowing that the family can't be with them is completely heartbreaking. You do everything you can, and you really try to invest yourself in establishing a rapport with the family and with the patient, even though they're on a ventilator. You promised the family you're gonna hold their hand and make sure you're not going to leave their side. All of those things are really important.
"You try to make it as personal as you can because you feel so bad for those families. Because I know if that were me, I don't know how I would've dealt with not being able to be with my loved one. It's heartbreaking."
With so much uncertainty and misinformation about COVID-19, Loe says part of her motivation for helping out in New York was to see it for herself. "I went out there and what I saw was real, the hospitals were definitely overwhelmed with critical patients that were on ventilators," she says. "I've never seen anything like that in my career where patients were stacked in hospitals having to die alone like that."

Loe has spent her time and money on medical missions to countries like China, Mozambique and Guatemala, but what she experienced in New York was astonishing. "I've never seen that even in developing countries that I've been to, where obviously they don't have the resources that we do here," she says. "To see that in our country was very eye-opening and shocking to me. So I know this disease is real, and I just want people to know that and to take precautions."
Loe continues to help treat the disease here in Southern California and has no set plans to return back east for a third time, although she did get her medical license in New York state just in case.
"That way I can always attend to any sort of disaster that occurs in New York," she says. "If anything happens, I'm ready, I'm licensed, I'm ready to go. Just put me in, Coach."
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