Alum Takes Volunteer Efforts To U.S. Department of Homeland Security

After a year of working in COVID-19 relief with Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE) at COVID testing and vaccination sites throughout the United States, Dylan Martins  '19 is transitioning into a position with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the Office of the Chief Financial Officer in Washington, D.C.

"I feel that I’ve accomplished what I came to CORE to do after returning from the Peace Corps," Dylan says. "I will be making the transition later this month and really look forward to this new adventure. In the interim, I am supporting CORE’s CEO, Ann Lee, as her executive assistant as CORE expands humanitarian aid operations internationally to places like Brazil and Puerto Rio. I am so grateful for my time with such an amazing organization and I plan on volunteering to support CORE’s international relief efforts remotely.”

For Dylan, who most recently helped coordinate a vaccination site inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, it culminates a nearly 15-month journey that started when his Dominican network came to the rescue for him when his Peace Corps service was cut short due to COVID-19. Dylan, who earned a degree in Biological Sciences with a minor in Community Action and Social Change, was serving as a Health Education Volunteer in the Republic of Moldova in Eastern Europe with the Peace Corps when the coronavirus began to spread.

Since his return to the United States, Dylan has been drawing on his Dominican experiences in his new roles, first working with CORE to provide drive-through coronavirus testing in Los Angeles then being assigned as a new site development manager for CORE in Bakersfield and the San Francisco Bay Area.

CORE, a nonprofit co-founded by actor and former Marin County resident Sean Penn, worked with the L.A. Mayor’s Office and the L.A. Fire Department to provide free drive-through testing for L.A. residents. By staffing these sites, CORE was trying to insure firefighters and police officers returned their focus to everyday emergencies around the city of Los Angeles while also easing the burden on hospitals and healthcare professionals.

It was the perfect fit for Dylan, whose four years at Dominican were marked by a dedication to community engagement. The timing was perfect, too, as Dylan was anxious to travel from Europe back home.

“We were doing our in-service training sessions on project development and grant writing when the Peace Corps Medical Director gave us a brief overview of the coronavirus,” he recalled. “At the time, I pushed it to the back of my head, not being really concerned with it because of how remote the village I worked in was.”

The situation started to worsen almost overnight. Soon Dylan was working alongside local health officials to implement community-level interventions to help mitigate potential risk. Within two weeks, he got notice that local schools and public areas would be closing.

“Immediately, I knew what was coming next,” he said. “We enacted Peace Corps evacuation protocol and began the consolidation process within a few days of the first case of COVID-19 in Moldova.”

Dylan was told to prepare to return to the U.S. on March 16, 2020 – only nine months into his Peace Corps assignment. His former Dominican classmates stepped up to make sure his return was as smooth a transition as possible.

While Dylan was en route to L.A., Samantha Easley ’19, who then was seeking her Master of Education degree in Postsecondary Administration and Student Affairs at USC, and Nicole Arima ’19 arranged transportation from the airport and a place for Dylan to live during his required quarantine. Delainey Boyd ’19, a scheduler for the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., called Peace Corps headquarters on Dylan’s behalf and helped with quarantine arrangements before his flight even landed.

“My Dominican friends really stepped up for me during my entire evacuation process. I cannot say enough about how supportive they have been,” Dylan said.

When he returned to L.A. to begin his quarantine, Dylan had time to reflect on what he had just been through – and what was next.

“I spent the first few days worrying about what life was going to look like. Returning back to a lot of uncertainty was unsettling,” he recalled. “It is hard to describe what it was like driving out of LAX to an empty 405 freeway. The home I was returning to was much different than the one I knew."

The day before Dylan’s quarantine ended he received a phone call from a returned Peace Corps volunteer, who offered Dylan a volunteer position and an opportunity to continue serving the community. He didn’t have to think twice before accepting.

The work with CORE is custom-made for Dylan.

Through his Service-Learning courses at Dominican, Dylan had interned at the RotaCare Clinic as a triage specialist, helping at-risk clients access healthcare services. The summer before his senior year, Dylan applied to AmeriCorps VISTA and accepted an opportunity to serve as a nutrition education facilitator in Ohio. There, he worked with an inner-city youth program, developing close relationships and deepening his understanding of generational poverty.

CORE runs an Asset Based Community Development model – a concept Dylan learned in his S-L class with Julia van der Ryn and Emily Wu in the Center for Community Engagement. Testing sites build on the resources that were already found in the community and mobilizes its available individuals, groups, and institutions to come together to address the COVID-19 crisis.

“On my first day I was trained as a site generalist, I directed patients on how to self-administer the tests, processed new patients and helped out where I was needed,” he said. “We were seeing these patients filled with fear on their worst day, it is our duty to be as compassionate as possible.”

Dylan was immediately able to draw on his Dominican experience.

“Learning how to listen was one of the most important lessons I learned in the Service-Learning program,” he said. “The CASC minor has taught me how to address difficult situations and has ingrained in me the value of community voices and the lived experience.”

After only a few weeks with CORE, Dylan was assigned to specialize in logistics and operations for one of the COVID-19 testing sites in L.A., helping to develop health protocol and improve the patient experience.

“Our site was staffed with some of the most amazing people from every industry,” he said. "My site manager applied his years of experience in the fashion industry to managing our site, and in the process helped me become a more effective compassionate leader as well.”

Dylan was assigned next as a new site development manager for California and helped expand sites throughout the state including Bakersfield, Napa Valley, and Oakland. CORE partners with local organizations and helped support and build their capacity to reach more specific communities.

"I was working on the Bay Area's first walk-up and walk-in testing clinic," said Dylan, who recruited a friend from Dominican, Brenda Vasquez '20, to serve as a medical translator. "I was helping to get these sites operational and fully self-sustaining. We were trying to target migrant farm workers in Napa and low-income communities in east Oakland who do not have access to smart phones or cars to register online and go to the available drive-through sites in California. My team was working on developing standardized procedure that would be published so any organization would be able to replicate and safely execute walk-up and walk-in testing centers."

Just as he did at Dominican, Dylan was listening and learning as he went along.

“The passion, courage and pure dedication every day from these volunteers, on the hottest of days or in the pouring rain, was truly inspiring,” he said. “Everyone was there for a reason and to be part of the solution.”