Sonoma County retail stores a testing ground for adherence to coronavrus isolation order

Karen Orantes and her three kids already had been to the grocery store when they hit the Target in Santa Rosa on Thursday for some basic needs, like toothpaste.

They hadn’t left home for the previous five days and were trying to complete their errands as quickly and efficiently as they could, given the threat of coronavirus and a countywide shelter-in-place order that now covers all of California.

Orantes, 38, a single parent, said she could have had her teenage daughter watch her 3- and 9-year-old siblings at home while she shopped. But they all decided that a brief trip into the world might offer “a little distraction” from the monotony of life under near lockdown and the reign of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.

They were not alone.

Amid the spreading paralysis of daily life intended to limit coronavirus spread, commercial hubs across Sonoma County have remained busy and well-trafficked in recent days.

Like similar orders in place across the Bay Area, Sonoma County’s emergency measure includes liberal provisions for the continued operation of “essential businesses,” so residents can shop for food, cleaning and personal care products, materials necessary to work at home and other items needed to support basic household and carry out “essential” business functions.

Thus, gas stations and hardware stores, restaurants offering curb-side pickup, pharmacies and grocery stores remain open, though some have shortened their hours.

So too, large, low-cost retailers like Target, Walmart and Home Depot continue to offer their wide-ranging fare.

But where county health officials had in mind households electing one individual to break quarantine when needed to venture out for necessities, the reality is whole families have been out wandering the aisles of stores “like it’s Christmas,” one Rohnert Park Home Depot employee said.

“They’re lingering around, shopping,” said the worker, who spoke on condition her name not be used, for fear of reprisal. “They’re not in an emergency situation, with a broken toilet or anything.”

With more than 75 million people in the U.S. now under some form of lockdown over the coronavirus, the nation has seen the rise of a quarantine shaming, defined this week by the Associated Press as “calling out those not abiding by social distancing rules” - “part of a new and startling reality for Americans who must navigate a world of rapidly evolving social norms in the age of COVID-19.”

The scrutiny has been leveled at people gathered in bars, on beaches, in houses of worship, in the aisles of big box stores and even at popular trailheads in the state, according to news reports.

The Windsor Walmart and Santa Rosa Target stores this week offered many examples of couples, friends, and families with children, from infants to adults, strolling leisurely past displays. Some stocked up on food and personal care items, while others filled carts with pillows and bedding, furniture and electronics, underwear and toys.

In the Windsor Walmart, where her fiancé was examining fishing gear Thursday, Crystal Pagal appeared offended that someone might be “mad I brought my kids.”

She lives way out in western Sonoma County, near Cazadero, and had come into town with her fiancé and two children to stock up on items they hoped would see them through the coming weeks of social distancing.

In addition to large containers of vinegar and baking powder for cleaning, her cart was chock-full of assorted goods, including an ample supply of diapers for her toddler and a large rubber trash can to store things in.

She was wary of people not maintaining sufficient distance from one another in the store, but said it was necessary for the family to make the trip together, in the absence of available child care.

“We had to get different things, and he’s not going to get feminine products, and I’m not going to carry big things,” she said.

Across the store, a Windsor woman, her adult daughter and son and his girlfriend checked out sale items in clearance - a lamp and brass-plated tumblers.

It was the mother’s second trip to Walmart that day, and her son explained they had come for plastic storage bins and a few other items to help with spring cleaning and reorganization.

The son, Jose Galicia, 29, said they generally tried to patronize local businesses - they had been to Molsberry Market for groceries and Dutch Bros. for coffee. But they needed toilet paper and the containers that they hadn’t found elsewhere, and so ended up at the box store.

“As long as you use common sense,” Galicia said, the shelter-in-place order wasn’t meant “to stop you from living.”

“I don’t think it’s intended for you to be home 24-7,” he said.

Fulton winemaker William Allen, who needed a part Wednesday for his winery, Two Shepherds Wine, took a more exacting approach to his errand. He knew exactly what was needed and went online at Home Depot to figure out what aisle it was in. He drove to the Windsor Home Depot and touched only the part and the key pad to buy it. In the process he observed commerce in progress like the world hadn’t been turned upside down in the past week.

“I saw families of four and six wandering around like it was Christmas shopping, and I thought ‘What are you doing?’?” he said.

He drove around and saw other stores were busy and their parking lots full, and families in Starbucks “getting lattés for all the kids like it’s Saturday afternoon.”

His fear, he said, is that if people don’t adhere to the letter and the spirit of the shelter-in-place order, it will prolong the suffering and require stricter action, perhaps even martial law.

Sonoma County government spokeswoman Jennifer Larocque said she was stunned that residents were using the exemptions for life essentials as some kind of group outing when the imperative is to keep people home as much as possible and have each household send one member out for purchases that are truly necessary.

“It should not be an activity,” Larocque said. “The intent of the order is to keep it isolated to the people who really need to do them.”

Those who are feeling a need to get out are encouraged to enjoy the county’s many parks and open spaces, or even a walk around the neighborhood, she said.

Parks have been jammed since schools let out and many employers sent people home, but people can still maintain social distancing, said Santa Rosa resident Jill Dennler, who has been at both Sugarloaf Ridge and Salt Point state parks in the past few days.

“People are certainly more than 6 feet apart,” she said. “More like 100 yards apart.”

At Walmart in Windsor, meanwhile, Kortni Fox and her 13-year-old daughter tried on jackets in women’s apparel.

Fox, 45, said they had needed laundry soap. But the real impetus for their trip was just needing to get out of the house, where the adjustment for the three teenagers she still has at home has been challenging.

So she and her youngest decided to head to Walmart and walk around for a while. Fox chatted with a few friends while there. “I feel like it’s an outlet,” she said later. “I didn’t know how important community is. We need community. We thrive on it. Just seeing the people here, I feel uplifted.”

But she acknowledged “it’s worrisome” in the context of the imperative to maintain social distance.

“We need community,” she said. “But on the other hand, we’re risking ourselves by getting out here.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.