WAUKESHA, Wis. — Darryl Enriquez is no stranger to making phone calls.

Calling strangers to learn information was something Enriquez became quite accustomed to in his four decades as a newspaper editor and reporter, most recently at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Now, two years after his retirement, he finds himself back with phone and notepad in hand, serving as a contact tracer in Waukesha County.

While very different in scope, Enriquez says both jobs have their similarities.

“I use my interview skills, my ability to reach out to people, show them I am not a threat. I don’t mean them harm, I mean to help them,” says Enriquez.

Enriquez focuses specifically on tracking school related exposures. Each day he reaches out to families who’s children may have been exposed to COVID-19 through school or extracurricular activities. His responsibilities include making sure families understand what it means to quarantine and track what sort of contact they may have had with others.

“The relationship part is to get them to open up and be comfortable with you,” says Enriquez.

Enriquez says that for himself and other contact tracers the more open people are about the contact they have had, the more effective they can be at their jobs. It is why he says his phone calls are always free of judgement.

“This disease is very sneaky, people can get it from close contact from another individual,” says Enriquez. “As a tracer I am trying to find where this person has been because the tentacles run very deeply.”

Helping neighbors one case at a time. A task that perhaps can be even more rewarding than a front page article in the newspaper. ​