We need folks like Bob Cawley at times like this. And we almost didn't have him.
Bob is the fixed ops director at Horne Auto, a 12-franchise dealership group in Gilbert, Ariz., just outside of Phoenix.
The scourge of a virus is nothing new to him.
On Christmas morning 2018, he found himself in an emergency room with leg pain. The next day, he fell to the floor at his home and couldn't find a way up.
Doctors diagnosed Guillain-Barré syndrome. The Mayo Clinic's website calls it "a rare disorder in which your body's immune system attacks your nerves." The description isn't pretty.
Guillain-Barré often starts at the feet and moves up. By the time Cawley was tended to, it had found its way to his chest. His case, doctors said, was caused by a virus.
He couldn't feed himself. He couldn't walk for months. In May, he went back to work — half days — in a wheelchair. Later, he traded in his wheelchair for a walker, then a cane. He rarely uses one now.
"I still have neurological pain," he told me over the phone last week. "I'm still a little tipsy at times."
He hopes he'll be one of those who is fortunate enough to recover completely.