"I really just wanted to blend in," Gado said. "I wasn't doing it for show. I didn't want people to say, 'Oh, look at this Green Bay Packer working.' I really wanted the experience. And I'm going to do it again next year."
His cover eventually was blown. In a drug-induced haze, a man coming out of surgery told his wife that the guy wearing scrubs played football.
"She says, 'My husband swears that you're Samkon Gado and I'm telling him that you're not, that you wouldn't be working here if you were.' And he'd just gotten out of surgery, so this guy was doped up," Gado said.
Gado fessed up. After the initial shock, the woman asked, "What are you doing here?"
A little bit of everything, it turns out. His shift began at 5 a.m. and involved everything from measuring vital signs to helping patients get out of bed. Drawing blood was "nerve-racking," Gado said, but he notes that he had to hand the needle to the nurse only once in more than a dozen attempts.