EDINBURG — When Annette Ozuna gets overwhelmed from leading the COVID-19 vaccine initiative at the Doctors Hospital at Renaissance here, she can just look across the arena or go to the back room to find strength and peace in her husband, Ron Ozuna.
He says the same about her.
“She makes me better each day and every day,” said Ron, a pharmacist for DHR. “Knowing her support is there, that’s what energizes me and keeps me going.”
Annette, who is also a DHR pharmacist, has been in charge of the floor operations of vaccine distributions, including registration and injections, while Ron is behind the scenes overseeing the preparation of the syringes.
“Sometimes we will butt heads, but it’s all for the same purpose,” Annette, a Roma native, said. “And maybe it’s that we love each other that makes us understand each other.”
The couple plans to spend Valentine’s Day the same way they’ve spent nearly every day for the past few months: distributing vaccines to the community.
But if they’re doing it together, their hearts are content.
Married for 15 years now with two children, Annette and Ron met for the first time at McAllen’s Rio Grande Regional Hospital where he was a pharmacist and she was an intern at the time. After she completed the program and graduated from the University of Texas’ pharmacy school, which is also Ron’s alma mater, the two have been inseparable.
They got engaged a year after dating and got married on Sept. 2, 2005.
After making a joke that Ron’s truck was what drew her to him, Annette said their shared passion for caring for the community was what brought them together and has kept them close.
“We know that we have each other for support and have very similar thoughts and goals, personally and professionally,” Annette said.
They’ve been working at DHR together for six years now and are known as the “pharmacy couple” in the department. Before the hospital began distributing COVID-19 vaccines, Ron worked at the hospital’s main building as the pharmacy clinical coordinator, and Annette was based in DHR’s diabetes clinic across the street. Their demanding job meant they didn’t get to spend as much time together as they would hope.
Even though they have been working under the same roof since DHR moved its vaccine operations to the Bert Ogden Arena, they barely get to spend any time together. But they’ve stuck to a rule they have had for years now: to share at least one meal together every day.
“We will wait for each other and have at least one meal together — even if it’s a cold taco,” Annette said, laughing. “It’s whatever we get, and we make it quality time.”
In fact, it’s the tacos they shared on the first date they had that pushed Ron to believe that Annette would be the love of his life. She was working at a Mission pharmacy at the time, and he picked her up during her lunch break that day. Since she only had less than an hour, they went to an El Pato in Mission.
Ron is a man who appreciates simple living, and said when she ordered bean and cheese tacos at their first date, “that’s as simple as it got for me, and I was like, ‘yes, this is somebody I can build a life with.’”
It’s her support, he said, that motivates him to work hard. “I firmly believe that I am a better person and better pharmacist with her by my side,” he said, looking at her eyes.
Annette shared the same sentiment.
“I feel complete, being here, being at work doing long hours vaccinating the community,” she said. “I’m complete because he’s here and we are together.”
