LUBBOCK, Texas — Almost 40 years ago, when Covenant was still St. Mary’s Hospital, Jesse Flores, a surgical technician started rearranging his lunch schedule during work. Flores put in a lot of work to spend time with Sally Flores, a licensed vocational nurse who also worked at St. Mary’s.
“I would go to the nurses’ floor and find out when their lunch break was and I would hustle back to my department and tell my friends, ‘They are going to have lunch at this time,’ so that I could run into her in the cafeteria.” described Jesse. “I would bring my tray and say, ‘Is this seat taken?’ or ‘Hi, what a surprise; can we eat together?’ or, ‘Oh, here we are together again!’”
From there, the two seemed to keep bumping into each other more and more often.
“Another one of my tricks was to wait for her in the parking lot and go, ‘Oh, our shifts ended at the time!’ or ‘Wow, what a coincidence.’”
Whether Sally thought these meetings were just a stroke of luck or not, she said she enjoyed them just as much as Jesse.
“[It was] a lot of coincidence, but I like it,” said Sally with a chuckle. “It was nice to have the attention.”
Jesse’s boss, Connie Gonzales said the Flores’ love for one another may have helped their work too.
“I think that’s maybe why they stayed here, right? Because they met here and they love Covenant,” said Gonzales. “I think that helps people stay because some of the issue is young people get married and they move off with their husband or their wife or whoever they choose to marry, and so I think that’s part of why they stayed here.”
Now, about 35 years of marriage and a combined 75 years at Covenant later, Sally’s former manager, Emily Stephens, said the Flores’ are exemplifying the Covenant culture together.
“When you find somebody that works at this establishment that has the same cultural values, that you have any bond with them and you see them every day today, I can see how that happened with them,” said Stephens. “They both had the same values.”
The couple said the key to living happily ever after goes all the way back to where it started.
“All the promises we made before God in our church and our family, and we wanted to keep that first and be patient,” said Jesse. “Yes, be patient,” added Sally.
