Former TCU tennis player now trapped in the deadliest place on earth for coronavirus
By order of the United States government, she was sent out of Fort Worth, back to her home, which is now the scariest place on earth.
Federica Denti resides in her apartment home in Northern Italy, virtually shut in an apartment building with her family.
“Just locked down for 18 days now,” Denti said.
When she says “locked down” it doesn’t mean driving to the grocery store for a latte followed by buying flowers at Home Depot, followed by a five-mile run to the park, followed by a 15th dog walk of the day.
Denti is a former TCU tennis player who graduated in 2013. She had worked as a local tennis pro until her visa expired last year and she was ordered to leave the country. She returned to Italy, with the hope of coming back to Fort Worth.
She lives in Lombardy, which, as of March 22, had a coronavirus death toll that exceeded 3,000 souls. The dead are carted away. The living must remain boxed up indoors.
“At the end of last week, no outside physical activity/exercise was allowed. Only essential businesses were left open,” she said in an interview conducted on Facebook messenger.
“Only one person per family is allowed to go to the grocery store, and we are not supposed to leave our municipality unless for emergent reason (health or work, if you are allowed to work).”
As surreal as our current state is here in the States, what Denti describes in Italy sounds like something from a different world.
The death toll is now over 7,500.
“Police checkpoints are getting more frequent and a lot of people are being fined, even if they are riding their bikes by themselves,” she said. “If families have dogs/pets they have to let them out in the vicinity of their house. You can go out but you take the chance of running into the police and being questioned. They say they are patrolling the paths that we have in the woods close to our house.”
Being outside requires a “self certification” card explaining the reasons citizens are not inside.
Denti, 29, said no one in her immediate family has tested positive for the coronavirus. Then again, they have not been tested. Tests are limited, and unless the person shows symptoms the mandate has been to self-quarantine.
Her uncle’s mother tested positive, and although she’s a senior no one in her family could visit her in a senior-citizen care facility.
One myth Denti wanted to dispel: The Italians are just letting their elderly die.
“No, not at all. Every municipality is working hard to avoid letting the elderly even go out and do groceries in order to protect them,” she said. “We organized personal home delivery services for every single person that calls in.”
Slow reaction to coronavirus
Denti sounds like the rest of us. We were all slow to believe, or react, to the news as it spread.
She has a brother living in Beijing, and he told her what the conditions were like there.
She said her brother had been living in a state of lockdown in Beijing since the start of February. People were finally allowed have a drink in a public setting for the first time last weekend.
Most restaurants there remain closed. Officials continually check people’s temperatures before they head back into office spaces.
It’s one thing to read and watch about these sorts of events. It’s quite another to live with them.
“A lot of people felt ‘safe’ and kept congregating and carrying on as normal: going skiing, doing happy hour (in Italy),” she said. “Only when we started seeing the death count rise we started listening. The image that most affected me was seeing a line of military vehicles carrying away bodies to be cremated in another region because there were not enough facilities to do it here.”
Like most businesses, her parents’ leather goods store located near Lake Como is closed. She is not sure when it will be allowed to re-open. Since most of the business relies on tourism, her family’s way of life has never been more vulnerable.
All of it is a concern, but the priority now is remaining healthy. And that means staying in her building that is shared by 10 different family members.
In her four-story building, her grandfather lives on one floor. Her aunt’s family of four lives on another floor. Four members of Denti’s primary family have their own floor. She lives in the basement.
She reads. Watches Netflix. Practices yoga.
Tennis? ... Right through here, the court may as well be on the moon.
She has submitted an application to return to the United States, but that process has stopped.
“Not being able to teach,” she said, “made me realize with absolute certainty that that’s what I need to be doing and I want to do it in Fort Worth.”
This story was originally published March 26, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
