Health care workers around the world risked their lives — and those of their families — to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Eleven workers, from the factories and farms to the highways and supermarkets, tell how they got themselves — and us — through a catastrophic year.

Matt Shaw wasn't supposed to be in New York in July 2012.

Shootings earlier that summer rattled his mother, Paula Shaw-Leary, so she sent her youngest of seven children, a 21-year-old finance major who had just been accepted to SUNY Albany for a masters degree in economics, to his sister's home in Georgia.

"I just for some reason had this feeling: Get him out of here, get him out of here, get him out of here," Shaw-Leary said. "But he wanted to come back and I couldn’t keep him."

Shaw was fatally shot in a case of mistaken identity outside the AK Houses at Lexington Avenue and East 128th Street about 1:30 a.m. on July 5, 2012, shortly after his return to the city.

Three years haven't eased Shaw-Leary's grief. On better days, she eats her breakfast and has strength enough to do some vacuuming and dusting.

But other days, especially when she hears about a new shooting, she relives each dark detail of her son's death.

“Most days, you’re all right,” Shaw-Leary said. "And then, some days, you just go back to day one."

Only 15 percent of drivers who killed pedestrians or cyclists have been charged under a law designed to increase penalties against drivers in the nearly two years since it took effect, a DNAinfo New York investigation has found.

And only 10 drivers among those who struck and injured 20,082 pedestrians and cyclists were charged under the new legislation — which was supposed "to give some teeth" to a bundle of laws that are part of Mayor Bill de Blasio's "Vision Zero" plan to eliminate traffic fatalities.

“This bill was the most dramatic of all of them in the way it was going to change the way people live their lives," said a City Council source who was involved in crafting the law, but who asked for anonymity because the person is not authorized to speak to the press.

At the American Museum of Natural History on Tuesday, Hashim Kirkland lowered his camera a bit to see the ancient brown spine of a dinosaur through the murky glass catwalk below him. He clicked and then raised the camera again to capture the massive hip of an Apatosaurus, a long-necked plant eater.

“I’ve been fascinated by dinosaurs since I was a kid,” Mr. Kirkland said. “They’re so amazing and so big.”

But unlike most of the people in the hall clicking their shutters and gawking at the prehistoric beasts, Mr. Kirkland could not see the hulking skeletons clearly because he’s legally blind.

Hurricane Sandy destroyed everything James McCormick held dear.

He lost his partner of nearly a half century, a 64-year-old former Marine named David Maxwell, who returned to the couple's Midland Beach bungalow to protect it against the storm's wrath and was drowned in a surge along with their cat, Mittens.

He lost every photo chronicling their relationship — leaving him to rely only on his memory to picture his longtime love and the boisterous life they once lived in the '60s West Village and later on Staten Island.

“I don’t have a partner anymore. I have no more pictures of him. They’re all gone,” said McCormick, a 74-year-old Navy veteran who has been paralyzed on the left side since a stroke last March and who has lived at the Carmel Richmond Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center ever since.

The Bloods gang leader calmly answered the cellphone as heavily-armed police surrounded his home after he shot a firefighter Friday morning.

"Yes," Garland Tyree, 38, said over the phone at about 8:30 a.m. as he was inside his locked home at 15 Destiny Court during a standoff with police that began at 6 a.m. when U.S. Marshals came to arrest him.

His voice revealed none of the chaos or the tension of the scene just outside his door.

Law enforcement officers with the Regional Fugitive Task Force made their way into his building, but were driven out by the thick smoke from a smoke grenade he had set off, officials said.

"I don't know what they want. They just kicked my door in," Tyree calmly told DNAinfo New York during a 90-second phone conversation.

La-keeyatta Steward, 17, sat on a small black pillow one recent Tuesday afternoon, her legs tucked under her. Her meditation instructor told her to imagine her body pulled upward by a string, so she lowered her shoulders and straightened her back.

Then two of her classmates burst in.

“There was a brawl,” called Ian Alsopp, 18, shaking his head. “It went down. It went down.”

Riding the subway after school, he said, he saw about 20 teenagers beat up another boy.

The news startled Ms. Steward and the other high school students at the Brooklyn Zen Center, where they attend weekly meditation sessions meant to help them handle the challenges of growing up in the city.

“This is where you actually use this,” the instructor, Greg Snyder, told Mr. Alsopp. “Notice the thought. That’s fine. Notice the anxiety. Notice the fear. Use the meditation to focus your mind. Are you with me?”

“I’m with you,” Mr. Alsopp said before settling onto his pillow, still fidgeting.