courtesy of St. Louis County Department of Public Health
Every weekday around 6 a.m., certain St. Louis County Department of Public Health employees dance into work. Nowadays they must be temperature-screened before entering the John C. Murphy Center in Berkeley, so chief operating officer Ken J.A. Griffin waits at a table with a small speaker pumping out music. If they start grooving, Griffin stands and grooves, too.
Griffin, 33, has been a leader in the county’s response to the pandemic. He and his team have set up COVID testing apparatus and gathered enough personal protective equipment to enable the county’s health centers to keep providing services to walk-in patients.
“He doesn’t just send us on our way or watch us from the sidelines,” says Jody Wilkins, clinical services manager. “This past weekend, we held two days’ worth of testing, 12 hours each day, and he was right there with us. It’s crazy, the amount of things he does.”
Not without fear, either. Griffin notes that he’s immunocompromised because his spleen’s been removed. He conquers that fear, he says, by working—12-hour days, lately. It’s a relief to return home to his three “comfort dogs,” he adds.
Priscilla Williams, operator of the county health center in Pine Lawn, says Griffin is always grinning, always jubilant. When he visits her center, she and her colleagues call out to him his favorite slogan—“We care!”—to which Griffin responds, “That’s right! WE CARE!” both acknowledging the cheesiness and genuinely believing it.
