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Peruvian officials in Boston called Jay Peak on Monday night with an ask: Could the resort get eight of its seasonal workers — nationals of the South American country — on a flight in the city by next afternoon?
Melissa Sheffer, head of the resort’s J-1 visa program, got to the task. By 5 a.m. she’d rallied enough drivers and gathered enough workers to fill the seats for the flight to Houston, a pitstop on the way to Peru, where a majority of the resort’s seasonal housekeeping staff is from.
“That’s how quickly things are moving,” said JJ Toland, Jay Peak’s communications director. “You seem to be walking through molasses, and all of the sudden you get the call of lighting — like, ‘Go, go, go.’”
Thirty-one Peruvian seasonal workers were stuck at the Jay resort as of Wednesday, Toland said. They’ve been unable to leave since March 15, the day Peru closed its borders to all travel in response to the coronavirus pandemic, as first reported by the Caledonian-Record.
“Their lives got hung up in limbo,” Toland said. “While they might love Jay Peak, they really want to get home.”
News stories around the country have focused on the hundreds of American citizens stranded in Peru. Fewer have looked at the other side of the equation. As Americans are being transported back home, so too are some internationals here: Jay Peak has helped 22 of its 53 seasonal workers so far, Toland said, mostly Peruvians and some Argentinians.
Most of the Peruvian workers at Jay Peak are in their mid-20s or 30s, Toland said, and some are students. They came to work at the resort as part of the federal J-1 visa program, a cultural-exchange initiative that allows 280,000 international guests each year to work or study in the U.S.
And the workers at Jay Peak aren’t entirely alone.
“All of our Peruvian students are still in the U.S., either in NYC, Miami, or Houston,” said John Bleh, communications manager for the Sugarbush resort in Warren. “They were told to register with the Peruvian consulates in those cities, who are putting the students up in hotels and feeding them until Peru lifts the travel ban and allows flights into our country.”
Most of Sugarbush’s workers from other countries were able to go home, Bleh said.
The same applied for the state’s Vail-owned resorts: Stowe, Okemo and Mount Snow.
“Given certain border controls and travel restrictions, it has been difficult, if not temporarily impossible, for some of our employees to return home,” said Vail senior communications manager Jeff Wise. “During this challenging time, our resorts are allowing those who have not been able to return home to remain in our housing rent-free.”
Spokespeople for the Killington, Stratton and Smugglers’ Notch resorts didn’t respond to requests for comment Thursday.
The Peruvian government’s announcement came one day after Jay Peak management decided to shut down the resort — about 10 days before Gov. Phill Scott put in place Vermont’s stay-home order. Ski resorts around the state began shutting down or shifting operations that week.
Housekeepers at Jay had spent March 14 sanitizing the resort room by room, surface by surface, Toland said, and were making plans to travel before returning home.
When it became apparent the workers would have trouble leaving, management moved them from their dorm-style employee housing to some of the resort’s newer cottages, Toland said, where they’ve been living in quarantine.
Box trucks deliver weekly tranches of groceries and supplies for the workers, Toland said.
He said the resort is letting the employees stay for free and for as long as they need, and that “they’re enjoying the life of kind of owning the resort.”
The workers have mostly kept positive during the ordeal, he said, though they long to be home.
“I think if you had to be stuck anywhere, it’s not too bad to be stuck at a resort in northern Vermont,” he said. “But if they had their druthers, I think they’d rather be in their house in Peru.”
Sheffer, the visa program manager, has been talking to the Peruvian consulate in Boston daily about flights from Miami and Houston, which seem to be departing on an ad-hoc basis, Toland said.
“We are at the whims of the humanitarian flights; our timeline is to maintain daily contact with the Peruvian consulate in Boston,” he said.
“We have daily check-ins with everyone who’s remaining,” he said. “We will continue to provide for them until the last one is able to return home.”
Correction: JJ Toland’s last name was incorrect in an earlier version.
