Montville — The town and the Mohegan Tribe’s latest joint effort involves getting seniors vaccinated.

In the past couple weeks, as well as on Thursday, the tribe has worked with the Montville Senior Center to block off times at its COVID-19 vaccination clinics, run by Yale New Haven Health in the Mohegan Sun convention center, specifically for seniors in town. Town Councilor Billy Caron helped Senior Center and Social Services Director Kathie Doherty-Peck connect with the tribe.

Doherty-Peck said the assistance has been critically important to the town’s mission of helping seniors receive their shots. When the vaccine started coming out, she and her small staff tried to navigate the proper channels with seniors to set up appointments.

“A lot of our seniors don’t have computers, and the telephone wait was so long. It’s a process,” she said.

“Unfortunately, many seniors were going without because they either couldn’t do it or they couldn’t get to where it was being offered. My seniors don’t drive to Hartford, for example, so it was a real dilemma," she said. "We’re very fortunate that the tribe helped us make this happen. They’re very good to us and the populations we serve.”

“The Mohegan Tribe has always felt and known that Montville was their home, so anything they can do to be helpful to their friends, neighbors and extended family, they do without second thought,” said tribe spokesperson Chuck Bunnell, who helped coordinate the initiative. “Some of the seniors couldn’t get vaccinated the first time around, so we made it happen again.”

Doherty-Peck said after the first shot, an appointment for the next one is determined on the spot.

The seniors who were unable to get an appointment elsewhere — the town also has been trying to set up seniors with appointments at CVS, for instance — either drove themselves, had a family member drive them or were shuttled there via van by senior center staff.

“We got a lot of our seniors into CVS or Walgreens, which is wonderful, but it’s very hard. We go in every day and we often see everything booked,” Doherty-Peck said. “We load up our van, our bus, and we follow protocol by keeping them separated on the bus. We go back and forth to take other groups because with these safety protocols, we can’t fill up each ride completely.”

The town has been trying to get the word out to seniors about the opportunity.

“Folks have been calling us, or their children live in another state and they’re calling us, asking, ‘Where does my mom go for her vaccine?’” Doherty-Peck said. “People are looking for help. So we make a list (of seniors who need vaccinations) and then we call people. A lot of seniors do come to the senior center regularly themselves, but for those who don’t, they hopefully call here so we can sign them up.”

The state made the vaccine available to people by age group, and the town followed those guidelines. But, Doherty-Peck said, a lot of people aged 75-plus weren’t vaccinated before eligibility expanded and she feared for the people who fell behind.

“Obviously I want everybody to get vaccinated, but when they opened up new age groups after 75-plus, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, we haven’t even gotten this group taken care of yet,’” she said.

She said Montville seniors have 40 slots per time block and they’ve filled up quickly. On Thursday, one of the two groups of seniors organized by the town received second doses of the vaccine. The other group will receive second doses in the coming weeks.

Bunnell elaborated on the relationship between Montville and the tribe.

“The Mohegans and the people of Montville have grown up next to each other and with each other for generations, so this is what they’ve been doing throughout their entire history,” he said. “These acts of kindness have been going back and forth between the town and the tribe literally for 13 generations.”

s.spinella@theday.com