Brian Jimenez had burned through dwindling supplies of scarce gasoline on a 45-minute drive in search of somewhere to fill his grandmother's blood thinner prescription. He ended up in Fajardo, a scruffy town of strip malls on Puerto Rico's northeastern tip, where a line of 400 waited outside a Walmart.
The store had drawn desperate crowds of storm victims who had heard it took credit or debit cards and offered customers $20 cash back — a lifeline in an increasingly cashless society. Store employees allowed customers in, one by one, for rationed shopping trips of 15 minutes each.
Then, at noon, the store closed after its generator croaked and before Jimenez could get inside to buy his grandmother's medicine.