As we start a new year, let’s check in with some memorable Alaskans we met in 2020

This year, we introduced readers to all sorts of people living through this extraordinary year.

A working mom faced with remote schooling her young kids. A restaurant owner staring down the financial ruin of the pandemic. A daughter visiting her elderly father at his care home, separated by a pane of glass. A family mourning the loss of a wife and mother. All navigating an extraordinary time.

We wondered how the rest of 2020 played out for some of the people we spoke with this year, so we reached out to hear about what happened after the articles that introduced them to readers published, how the rest of 2020 played out. Here’s what we found out.

Family of Amanda Bouffioux: They lost an “amazing mother” to COVID-19. Now they’re thinking of a new start in Hawaii.

[COVID-19 quickly sickened an Anchorage woman in her 40s, then killed her. Her family has a message: ‘It’s here, and it’s deadly.’]

Amanda Bouffioux tested positive for COVID-19 in August and spent three weeks on a ventilator before she died Sept. 8.

On Dec. 26, her family, including her partner Scott Wells, gathered again at her grave, this time celebrating what would have been her 45th birthday.

They sang “Happy Birthday,” ate cupcakes and listened to Bouffioux’s favorite singer, George Jones. The cupcakes were wrapped in her favorite color, purple. Flowers were placed on her makeshift headstone. Her permanent in-ground stone will be added once the ground has thawed.

Wells and his children will be moving to Hawaii at the end of January, hoping to find sunshine and healing.

“It’s difficult to be in this home right now,” he said. “I’m laying in the same bed ... that I isolated her in. I’m just done, man. I gotta get out. I’m basically giving everything away and starting over.”

Wells said he likes the way Hawaii has handled the virus, including a strict quarantine policy for visitors.

“I saw a house I liked and the gal that returned my email asked if I was the family in the paper,” Wells said. “She was like ‘Yes, come on and heal over here.’”

He thanks the staff at the Alaska Native Medical Center for their continued service during this pandemic.

“Them poor nurses and poor doctors, they don’t deserve it and they’re doing everything they can,” he said.

Wells worries about what would happen to his children if he were to become sick with the virus.

“I’m all they got now,” he said. “What happens if I don’t make it? What happens to my kids? My main goal is to survive it.”

— Emily Mesner

Joe Davidson: At the outset of the pandemic, the owner of Sis’s Cafe and Catering thought he was weeks away from closing. His business has survived. Barely.

[Watching his Anchorage cafe crumble under the weight of the coronavirus crisis, one quiet day at a time]

In early April, Anchorage was a few weeks into its first pandemic lockdown and Joe Davidson was on the edge of losing his restaurant.

Davidson’s Old Seward Highway business, Sis’s Café and Catering, seemed to be hurtling toward closure. At the time, Davidson believed he was a few weeks away from having to close his doors for good.

Almost nine months later, Sis’s Café is still open.

“It could be a heck of a lot better, but it could be a heck of a lot worse,” Davidson said Tuesday.

Davidson received a PPP loan for $30,000, which, combined with money from his savings, has helped the restaurant limp through the year. Municipal-ordered indoor-dining shutdowns have hurt, Davidson said. Loyal customers and corporate clients like GCI and ConocoPhillips who’ve ordered lunches for their workers, have helped to keep him afloat and employing a few workers.

“It’s not a lot, 10-15 meals a day. But it adds up. All those things make a difference,” he said. “At the end of the week, you have $500. Right now 500 bucks is a lot to me.”

Heading into 2021, he’s operating with no financial cushion and no sense of what’s next. But he’s still in there early every morning, making batches of soup and assembling sandwiches. Despite it all, Davidson says he feels a tempered glimmer of hope about what next year will bring.

“We survived it,” he said. “Well, I think we survived it.”

— Michelle Theriault Boots

DeWayne Ingram: Community response to a painful encounter allows a father to feel optimism for his kids’ future.

[He went for a run in Anchorage. A woman stopped to ask if he belonged in the neighborhood.]

[A week after an unwelcome encounter, an Anchorage runner returns with supporters — and a welcome from the neighborhood]

DeWayne Ingram left Alaska with mixed feelings when he followed a job promotion to Seattle in August. It was less than two months after a driver stopped him while he was running in a South Anchorage neighborhood.

The encounter, which happened during a time when protests against racism were gripping cities across the U.S. and beyond, left Ingram feeling that he was perceived as a threat for no reason other than because he is Black. The driver was white.

But rather than leaving Alaska angry and discouraged, Ingram felt otherwise. He said many people called and texted him to show support after the incident, some of whom otherwise would’ve had a hard time engaging in conversations about race. Friends and supporters organized a 1.5-mile “We Run With DeWayne” run a week later.

“Although it was such a hurtful, painful incident, the response to it from the community was just amazing,” he said.

Ingram said good came of the incident for his three kids, too. They talked about their anger and fears in the aftermath, but they also showed an interest in knowing more about the history of racism in America, including what their grandmother had experienced.

The positive community response also helped him drive home an important point.

“If anyone looks like the same lady that stopped me, that doesn’t mean that they’re a bad person or anything like that,” Ingram said.

“It also shows me that my kids are going to be in a better place as time goes on,” he said.

— Marc Lester

Michelle Hensel: In the spring, the Anchorage physician visited her 90-year-old dad through the window at his care home. At Christmas, she did the same thing.

[Visiting Dad, through the window, at an Anchorage nursing home on lockdown]

In May, Michelle Hensel and her family went to visit her 90-year-old father Richard Hensel at the Aspen Creek Senior Living Center in Anchorage.

For safety, they visited through the glass window of his room. Months later, on Christmas, they did about the same thing: Delivering gifts and talking through the window, on cellphones.

Richard Hensel, a retired biologist with a storied career in Alaska, will turn 91 on Saturday, and has been remarkably upbeat through this isolating year, his daughter said. He has not contracted COVID-19 and is in generally good health, his daughter said.

“He just rolls with it,” she said. “He’s been through so many things in his life, surviving plane crashes and tsunamis, this is sort of one more thing.”

There have been very few coronavirus cases in the facility, which she’s thankful for. Over the summer, residents could visit with family members outside and masked, taking precautions.

Michelle Hensel, a doctor who trains health aides, was among the first people to be vaccinated in December. That doesn’t mean she can visit her dad inside yet — data shows the vaccine will prevent her from getting sick with COVID, but it’s not known if vaccinated people could still be carriers of the virus and pass it to other people, she said.

That’s why she’s waiting for her father to be vaccinated before she sees him — hopefully he will get a first dose in early January.

“Those are important things for people to realize,” she said. “I can’t really see my dad until my dad has had the (two-dose) vaccinations.”

She’s looking forward to the day when her dad can hug her and his grandkids again.

“My hope is that the suffering will start to ease for so many people, on so many levels,” she said. “I also understand it’s going to take a really lot of time, and a lot of diligence, until we can get this under control and make those connections we want to make. The biggest thing I think my dad misses is that human touch.”

— Michelle Theriault Boots

Peggy Treadway: She spent more than 50 days on pregnancy bedrest confined to a hospital room because of coronavirus restrictions. Having her twins was only the beginning.

[Coronavirus restrictions confine pregnant Eagle River woman to a hospital room for 46 days and counting]

When we met Peggy Treadway in early May, she had been confined to a hospital room at Providence Alaska Medical Center for 46 days and counting. Treadway, an Anchorage nurse, was pregnant with twins and considered high-risk for preterm labor.

Her doctors ordered her on to a strict bed rest that required a hospital stay. Awaiting her babies’ birth, coronavirus restrictions then in place forced Treadway to stay in her room at all times. For more than a month she was not allowed outside, despite pleading with hospital management that her mental health was plummeting.

The babies were born less than a week after the story published: Myles, a 3-pound, 12-ounces boy, then Micah, a 3-pound, 6-ounces girl. It was day 52 of Treadway’s hospitalization. She was overjoyed by their healthy birth, but their time at the hospital wasn’t anywhere near over.

The babies spent 66 days in the neonatal intensive care unit at Providence before finally coming home on July 17. By the time she had babies in the NICU, the hospital’s evolving coronavirus policies allowed Treadway and her husband to go home at night and sleep in their own beds and then spend the day with her babies at the hospital. Still, it was a rough slog that has left her with “a little PTSD” about even stepping into the hospital.

But she’s grateful to be ending this year with two rolling, scooting, near-crawling babies with gummy smiles and bald heads who are starting to eat solid foods.

— Michelle Theriault Boots

Sabrina Shoup: For this working mom, remote schooling two young kids during the pandemic has only gotten harder — and more frustrating.

[Two kids, three laptops and one frustrated working mom: How an Anchorage family is struggling through the start of the school year]

In early September, Sabrina Shoup was struggling to manage remote online learning for her two sons. She hoped it would be temporary. At the end of the semester, she’s even more frustrated — and resigned to the idea that despite what the Anchorage School District says, her kids won’t be going back to in-person school for a long while.

A lot has happened in her family’s life this fall: Shoup and her boyfriend bought a house and moved to Anchorage. Her kids switched schools, going from Birchwood ABC Elementary in Chugiak to Sand Lake Elementary. Her younger son is in Sand Lake’s Japanese immersion program. Now, Shoup is overseeing remote learning of Japanese language — for a kindergartener. It’s as hard as it sounds.

“I’ve thought of pulling him many, many times,” she said.

She’s sticking it out in hopes things will be easier when he attends school in-person, whenever that may be.

False starts about returning to in-person school have been difficult for the boys. In November, her sons were so excited to return they spent days wearing masks at home, “practicing for when school starts,” Shoup said. When the district changed course days before kids were to return, due to surging COVID-19 cases, “they were crushed.”

The isolation and loneliness continues, Shoup said. But there are bright spots: Her new street includes a pack of neighborhood kids who play outside together.

— Michelle Theriault Boots

Thomas Waerner: He won the Iditarod, and spent months stranded in Alaska. Now home in his native Norway, he’s going to miss mushing’s biggest race in 2021.

[Iditarod champion Thomas Waerner is finally back home in Norway, 11 weeks after winning the race]

In March, Norwegian musher Thomas Waerner won an Iditarod unlike any other Iditarod.

His moment of glory was overshadowed by the pandemic, which quickly moved from a nascent threat to a full-blown global health emergency in the time it took the dog teams to get from Willow to Nome.

With borders closed, he and his dogs were stuck in Alaska for months with no way home to Norway, where Waerner and his wife have five children, and electrician business and a busy kennel. He spent most of that in-limbo time in Salcha, at a fellow musher’s property.

Eventually a 65-year-old DC-6 cargo plane took Waerner and his dogs home to Norway by early June. Looking back, he’s philosophical about being stranded: “I have some of my best friends (in Alaska),” he said. “Not many times in life you can spend so much time with them.”

The defending Iditarod champion won’t be racing in Alaska in 2021. The travel logistics are insurmountable, for the moment.

“Much work and a big problem to get flights for the dogs,” he said. “My goal is to be back in 2022 for the Iditarod.”

He does plan to race in one of Europe’s best known long-distance mushing races, the Finnmark and the Femundløpet.

“It is a strange year and I still can’t believe that I won,” he said.

— Michelle Theriault-Boots

Frank and Heather Philip: He spent 18 days hospitalized with COVID-19. Now, he and his wife are adjusting to a new life — and bills.

[‘I really thought I was losing my husband’: An Anchorage couple shares their experience with COVID-19]

Frank Philip spent 18 days fighting for his life in the hospital after he contracted the coronavirus this summer in Anchorage.

Philip survived, but he and his wife are still living with the fallout of his illness. Philip was let go from his job of 25 years in the maintenance field.

“He just can’t do it anymore,” said his wife Heather Philip. “But that never makes it easier.”

He doesn’t have as much energy as he did before COVID-19, Philip said.

The family is confronting a mountain of medical bills. Philip’s total cost for hospitalization and treatment topped $1 million, she said.

Insurance covered most, but between that and a neck surgery she underwent around the same time, “I think we owe $150,000, between those two hospitalizations,” she said.

At the end of the year, both feel fortunate to be alive and haven’t let their guard down against the virus. Grandchildren from Washington state are visiting Alaska right now, and they just had a conversation about what a visit might look like: “We told her masks are mandatory and we can hug and smooch them like usual,” Philip said.

She hasn’t had the COVID-19, she said, and knocked on wood.

— Michelle Theriault-Boots

Hailey Williams: The pandemic thwarted a star sprinter’s last season of Alaska high school competition. But at Duke, she’s poised to start a bright college career.

[One of Alaska’s best-ever high school sprinters never had her biggest moment to shine. But she’s not done showing what a girl from Delta Junction can do.]

Standout runner Hailey Williams of Delta Junction missed her senior track and field season when the coronavirus pandemic shut down many school sporting competitions this spring.

But it wasn’t the end of her career: In the fall, she headed off to Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where she is competing on the NCAA D-I track and field team.

On top of moving across the country to start college, her first semester meant frequent COVID-19 testing, socially distanced gatherings and masking, she said.

“It was a brand new experience not just for me, but for everyone,” she said.

She found a home in the close-knit track team, and will be heading back to North Carolina on Jan. 2 to prepare for her first intercollegiate track meet, to be held on Jan. 9. She’s excited to represent Duke, and proud of her Alaska hometown.

“2020 — it has been a learning experience for all of us,” she said. “It’s made us take a step back and put things into perspective.”

— Michelle Theriault Boots

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled the last name of Frank and Heather Philip.