This week’s #StokeAHero Channel Islands Happy winner is Alara Akaytan! @aakyatan13 is an amazing and talented medical researcher working at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. The entries submitted by friends @nizzle__nate, @ilockedown, and boyfriend @tedbadenhausenin all speak of Alara’s passion for medicine & public health and her fearless determination to help during the Covid-19 pandemic.
As the strain on the medical community increased in hard-hit NYC, volunteers were called on to help care for the rapid increase of Covid-19 infected patients in all levels of the medical community. When Alara was given the opportunity to change positions at Mount Sinai and transfer into a COVID-19 research lab working directly with infected patients, she did not think twice. This meant giving her time to work with Covid-19 patients and their families in addition to her original CTE and traumatic brain injury research. Since early March Alara and her research team have been working every day collecting information, samples, and data on the antibodies all directly from infected patients. Time off has been non-existent as she often doesn’t make it home for days at a time. Regardless of the long hours, night shifts, and endless work, she loves what she is doing and wouldn’t be happy if she wasn’t helping patients or her community.
Since getting hooked two years ago, surfing has become a release for Alara, who surfs NJ year-round. Through our communication with Alara’s nominators, we learned that a highly anticipated surf trip scheduled for this summer was canceled due to the pandemic and her workload. We also learned that Alara is finally receiving some much-needed time off to be with her family this week.
Tomorrow is her birthday so we thought that today would be a great day to announce her as our winner! At least she’ll have a new stick when she can finally make that trip! Happy Birthday, Alara! You are our Hero! We hope you get to relax a little! Thank you from The Surf Station!
