OAKLAND — Shelby Delaney and her fellow nurses working the evening shift at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center huddled in the break room like they always do just before their 3 p.m. start. The ICU manager would be deciding who should handle the sickest coronavirus patients, a daunting nightly ritual at hospitals under siege across the globe.
But first, something special was about to happen. This 27-year-old intensive care nurse was about to meet one of the greatest NBA basketball players of all time.
With her iPhone propped up on the table and her fellow nurses gathered around her, she adjusted her surgical mask and answered the FaceTime call.
Up popped the face of Stephen Curry, the 32-year-old Golden State Warriors superstar who has been sheltering in place at his Atherton home with his wife and three children since the coronavirus shut down the NBA season.
“Hey Shelby!” he said. “How you doing?”
“I’m good!” she said, then panned the crowd of nurses wearing their Warriors gear.
“This is the whole crew,” she said as they cheered in the background.
“I love it,” he said. “I can’t thank God enough for what you’re doing and just the sacrifice, the selflessness and the way everybody’s coming together. Thank you so much for what you do, your heart and the inspiration you provide for everybody.”
Shelby’s mouth was cotton dry. She had always imagined what it would be like to bump into Curry — maybe at a gas station, a grocery store — not for a selfie or an autograph, but to thank him for the impact he’s made on her life.
Just a week ago, on a day when the ICU nurse felt particularly drained, she posted a photo of herself on Facebook, pulling open her white medical coveralls to reveal a bright blue Warriors jersey underneath. She included a message encouraging her friends to donate bleach wipes and make face shields and even pitch in some fresh hot coffee for her fellow healthcare workers.
“These past few weeks have been filled with chaos and uncertainty as coronavirus cases continue to rise and hospital resources become more and more scarce,” Delaney wrote. “I found myself feeling powerless and defeated. It was in that moment that I knew I needed to summon my inner warrior. So I threw on my Steph jersey under my scrubs and started brainstorming how I could be part of the solution.”
After the Bay Area News Group reached out to the Warriors about the post, Curry — who has leapt onto the world stage in recent weeks to educate young people about the deadly pandemic — said he wanted to call Delaney and her fellow nurses to express his appreciation for the selfless battle they are fighting every day.
“I see you still have my jersey on,” Curry told her in the call.
Delaney leaned in close to the camera.
“Yeah, I got it on here,” she said, then flipped the white collar inside out revealing what she had written in black felt pen, in capital letters. It was Curry’s personal motto, taken in part from a Bible passage that he handwrites on the rim of his own basketball shoes:
“I can do all things.”
Delaney was one of the first ICU nurses at Alta Bates to volunteer to care for the coronavirus patients when they started coming in a month ago. Every day, she revs herself up like a soldier going to war, putting on her protective armor to stave off infection, steeling herself for the anxiety and fear that always come. How many patients are we going to get tonight? How bad is it going to hit us? Will I become infected?
When she enters each patient’s room, though, she transforms herself into something else entirely. Since family members are banned from bedsides in the quarantined ICU — a particularly cruel punishment of the pandemic — she fills a role she rarely had to play before the coronavirus landed on American shores four months ago.
Loved one.
Through her plastic face shield, she sees the fear in her patients’ eyes. Wearing gloves, she holds their hands. By the time the sick come here to the fourth floor ICU, they are often sedated or can’t speak because of a breathing tube. Still, through the filtered mask, she reassures them.
“You’re not alone. We’re here for you,” she gently tells them. “We’re going to help you through this. Your family and friends have been calling. They love you.”
On her worst days, when Delaney feels overwhelmed and afraid, she pulls out one of her 10 Curry jerseys.
They’ve been her “little shield of power” since she graduated from the University of San Francisco in 2015 and started her first job a few months later in the intensive care unit here at Alta Bates Sutter.
On the call, Delaney propped up her “Curry 6s,” showing off the basketball shoes she wears “all days, always” in the ICU.
“I appreciate that,” Curry said. “What we do is fun and all that, but more people need to know about what goes on in your world.”
Delaney, moving her mask under her chin, then launched into what she had wanted to say to him for years, if she ever got the chance.
“I wanted to thank you for how much you inspired me,” she said, “especially when I first started my job here, it’s a really steep learning curve, you have two people that you’re trying to make sure they don’t die on shift, and a lot of tough stuff going on with family. There were times I wanted to quit, give up.”
“Yes,” Curry said.
“And do something easier. That’s when I started wearing the jersey. That was like, just my way of kind of gathering my strength, reminding myself I’ve got this,” she said.
“Yes,” Curry nodded.
“And just to lead with love and lead with joy,” she continued, “the way you do and embrace my inner child and bring love and joy and fun to the world even though it’s a tough place to be. For real, from the bottom of my heart, you made a big difference in my life and I appreciate you for that.”
Curry thanked her right back.
“That’s a choice we all get to make no matter what’s thrown at us,” he said. “Joy, fun, togetherness, positivity, all of that, it’s contagious.”
This five-minute FaceTime took place during a week that health officials warned could be the worst yet in COVID-19 deaths across the country. In Alameda County, where cases have jumped to nearly 600 so far, healthcare workers like Delaney are already seeing more patients suffering the worst of coronavirus and are preparing for the possibility of a dreaded surge.
On Wednesday, Delaney and some of her fellow nurses began posting videos they recorded of the conversation with Curry on social media.
Delaney has been a Warriors fan since she played basketball at Albany High in the East Bay, where she met her husband, Robert Crowley. Their first date was at a Warriors game in 2011 at Oracle Arena. When they married last summer, the wedding took on something of a Warriors theme. When the couple entered the reception hall through a gauntlet of bridesmaids and groomsmen — like the Warriors taking the court — the guests waved custom-made blue-and-gold rally towels. For dancing, Delaney changed out of her high heels into Curry basketball shoes.
“You rarely get to meet your heroes in life,” Delaney’s husband said Tuesday. “And this is something that is just so genuine and someone who has been such an inspiration.”
Curry has always been a fan favorite. At 6-foot-3 he is dwarfed by his teammates and was underestimated in his early career. As he helped carry the Warriors to five straight NBA finals and three titles, his exuberance for the game — and his endless three-pointers — enraptured the Bay Area and beyond.
The coronavirus hit when Curry and his fellow NBA players were still in shock over the death of legendary player Kobe Bryant. Curry had been out with a hand injury for months, missing most of the season, and just after his return, he was sidelined again — with the common flu. His fans at first feared he might have been infected by coronavirus, like some of his NBA colleagues would be in days to come, including former teammate Kevin Durant.
With the Bay Area on lockdown starting March 17, Curry began using his public persona to encourage young people through social media posts to stay home, keep their distance from each other, and listen to his one-on-one Instagram interview with the country’s leading infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci. Curry and his wife, Ayesha, have donated a million meals to underprivileged grade-schoolers missing free lunches on campus.
He has always taken his job as role model seriously — his parents and his faith helped instill those values early. His mother, Sonya Curry, often discouraged him from wearing sunglasses inside or headphones in public. “People will love you if you love them,” she would often tell her son, she said in an interview with this news organization during the 2015 NBA Finals. “Give them your all on the court and be nice when you go to the grocery store.”
Curry and Ayesha met as teenagers at a youth church group in Charlotte, North Carolina. When he writes his motto on his shoes, “I can do all things…” he always includes an ellipsis. It’s only the first part of a Bible verse, Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
The slogan and the athlete would become sources of strength for a 27-year-old ICU nurse in the middle of a terrifying global pandemic.
As the call with the NBA superstar winded down, Delaney couldn’t resist: “Can I ask you one question?”
“When you have a day, I know you have to be human, and you have days you’re just tired and grumpy and not feeling it and surrounded by a lot of negativity, how do you gather that strength and positivity and openness and kindness that you always seem to have?”
Curry insisted he doesn’t always get it right, and “there are so many things that are thrown at you… but the thing is to control what I can control.”
Then he told her a story — about a poster he made that morning for his two daughters, ages 7 and 4.
“I made up this term I didn’t even know 12 hours ago,” he said. “Control your WABA.”
It’s an easy acronym reminding them to control their words, attitude, behavior and actions.
“Your WABA? Alright,” Delaney said.
“If it makes sense to a 7 and 4 year old, it makes sense for me in terms of those days you wake up and don’t got it, you don’t got the inspiration, but you’ve got to find it,” he said.
Instead of blaming others, he said, “what can I do differently? How can I change my perspective on it? More times than not, that’s how I get through it. So yeah, I’m going to go somewhere with the WABA. I like that.”
“I like that,” she said. “I think your jersey is a little bit of my WABA. You know what I mean? When I really need it, that’s my WABA.”
She thanked him for the call and “everything you’ve done for me.”
Curry returned the compliment.
“I know you guys have very important work to do,” he said. “We have so many people praying for you, rooting for you and I know as things continue to go, hopefully everybody will take a personal responsibility to try to end this thing, hopefully sooner than later.”
She thanked him and they said goodbye. The colleagues huddled around her exhaled a collective “awww” and applauded. Then one by one, they headed back for another eight-hour shift in the ICU.
