Two sisters faced separation after three-week cruise continues with two-week quarantine

By: Nicole Brodeur 3/10/2020 | Seattle Times 

 

The tags were slipped under the door of the cabin the two sisters had shared aboard the Grand Princess cruise ship for two weeks.

 

Bethel Mohseni, 87, and Belva Demaree, 78, had explored Hawaii, but after 21 people aboard tested positive for coronavirus, the 2,421 passengers were confined to their staterooms, where the two sisters spent their time talking, eating meals and following exercise videos.

 

As the ship prepared passengers to disembark at the Port of Oakland and go into a two-week quarantine, the two sisters learned — via those different-colored luggage tags — that they were going to be separated: Belva to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and Bethel to Travis Air Force Base in California.

 

The news so upset Mohseni that her blood pressure spiked quickly and the ship’s EMTs were called to her room.

 

“She’s a pretty hard lady, she doesn’t get stressed, but she was shaking a little bit,” said Mohseni’s son, Charles, of Seattle, who has been speaking to his mother and aunt every day since the quarantine. “It’s anticipation of being separated.

 

“There was some anxiety; you could tell in their voices,” he continued. “And they aren’t simpering. They are strong people. They have been keeping each other’s spirits up.”

 

Separating them could change all that, which is why Charles Mohseni, a retired commercial real-estate broker, has been in touch with lawmakers in Colorado, where his mother lives; and Indiana, where his aunt lives with her husband, in the hopes that they can intervene and keep the two sisters together during the quarantine.

 

“Everyone agrees it’s wrong,” Mohseni said. “We’re just trying to get the machine stopped before they are separated. Because once that happens, it will be really hard for them to be united again.”

 

Despite their ages, the two women — who have nine grandchildren between them — don’t fit the profile of an older person at risk of contracting coronavirus.

 

“They are both pretty high-functioning, energetic people,” he said. “My mom still does 10Ks and her sister is much the same. Up until this point, they have been in really good spirits. They thought the ship was doing everything right.”

 

They — and he — understand the need for the Grand Princess passengers to go into quarantine. But a potential separation raises new worries about the two sisters, Charles Mohseni said.

 

“Is it a government facility? Are they going to be with strangers?” he asked. “I hate to think of my aunt and mom being alone, without friends and families.

 

“I don’t know how it came to pass,” he said. “And everyone is sympathetic. It’s just getting tracking and someone saying ‘No, we have got to stop this.’ It would be comforting to know they are together.”

 

On Tuesday afternoon, word came from the office of Colorado Congressman Doug Lamborn that the family’s efforts had paid off, and that the sisters would be quarantined together in Texas.

 

“It’s pretty awesome that you can call your congressman and get help like that,” Charles Mohseni said. “Sometimes the system works.”