Humboldt Lines Up for Free Care 

It's 6:30 a.m. on July 12 and more than 100 people are lined up below the Carson Mansion on Eureka's First Street, waiting for the Adorni Center to open at 7. Some are bundled in jackets, while others are draped in blankets. Many sit in lawn chairs they'd brought from home, prepared to wait, while others sit on the sidewalk or stand. Some play cards to pass the time, while others read books or stare at their devices, as others chat idly. All are waiting for dental, medical or vision care, most of it long deferred.

At the front of the line sits Luna Lares and her husband Gilbert, both of McKinleyville, who arrived at 4 a.m., having read about the two-day free clinic in the newspaper.

"I read that folks can start lining up as early as 5:30, so I figured other people were reading that, too, so we should get here early," says Gilbert Lares.

Gilbert Lares says Luna needs dental work, while he needs a new pair of prescription glasses and also has a tooth that's come in improperly. He says it's been bothering him for more than a year and he's worried it's now rotting.

"We'll probably be back tomorrow," Luna Lares says, noting the clinic only allows folks to access one service per day in an effort to provide care to as many individuals as possible.

Immediately behind them in line is a woman draped in a bright tortoise print Pendleton blanket named Katie, who declined to give her last name but said she'd left her home in Hoopa around 3 a.m. to make the trip to the clinic, arriving around 4:30. She said learned of the clinic on social media and jumped at the chance to get a broken tooth taken care of, noting she'd been dealing with it — and the heat and cold sensitivity it caused — "for a good while."

The two-day clinic put on by California CareForce, the charitable arm of the California Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, was the brainchild of semi-retired local dentist Tom Lewis, who serves on the CareForce board and lobbied for the nonprofit to bring one of the four free healthcare clinics it puts on annually to Eureka. Lewis says he's seen first-hand both the tremendous need locally, and the impact of these clinics, which see CareForce transport millions of dollars in medical equipment and a host of volunteers to communities throughout the state to provide free care, no questions asked.

While not as large as clinics hosted in more urban parts of the state, Eureka's event served nearly 500 people over two days, says CareForce Executive Director Cyndi Ankiewicz. She credits a small army of volunteers, both local and from out of the area, healthcare professionals and others simply looking to lend a hand, with the clinic's having been able to treat 222 dental patients, provide 86 medical screenings and serve 217 vision patients, outfitting almost all with new glasses.

"I think the clinic went really well," she says. "The need is just so incredibly great. I knew the need was great and the host committee was talking about it, but seeing it first-hand was just really heart wrenching. But what was heartwarming is the way the community came together to do this."

Ankiewicz says the challenge of rural clinics is that the need is massive due to a lack of local providers, which in turn makes it challenging to find enough trained healthcare professionals to volunteer to staff a clinic to capacity. The group had set up 12 dental care stations in the Adorni Center, for example, but never had more than six dentists volunteering at one time. The vision lab, meanwhile, never had more than two optometrists. Ankiewicz says the clinic was forced to turn some people still waiting in line away at the end of each day due to a lack of capacity.

But she stresses that the only reason the clinic was able to do so much and reach so many was because of the kindness and generosity of its volunteers.

Those included general volunteers like Stan Shaffer. While sanitizing equipment in the dental area, Shaffer says he'd heard about the clinic from his son and "wanted to give back to the community," so signed up to help. They also included a handful of people from the local chapter of Medicare for All, who helped out in a variety of capacities, with more than a couple mentioning that clinics like this — which depend on professionals volunteering their time to care for patients who have waited hours to be seen after not having access to care for months or years — are both a testament to generosity and good will and a condemnation of our current medical system.

Local volunteers also included a host of professionals, like dental hygienist Michele Johnson, who says she's working with the Blue Lake Rancheria to start a primary care and dental clinic locally and jumped at the chance to "give back" by helping out at the clinic.

"It's been great," she says while taking instruments to be sterilized in a rare break between patients. "I had three people today who had never had their teeth cleaned. Ever."

Over in the optometry lab, Eugene Lee says he's a regular volunteer with CareForce, having helped out with 50 or so clinics over the years, adding the nonprofit flew him into Humboldt to help manufacture eyeglasses. A consultant in the Newport Beach area, he says vision is one of those things people often take for granted until it begins to fail them or they don't have access to proper care. But without vision, he says, people can't navigate the basics of life, like filling out job applications or medical forms.

"To me, that's what keeps me coming to these," Lee says.

Across the room a short time later, John Weis, of St. Louis, Missouri, who says he's been volunteering at these clinics for 12 years, is giving an eye exam to Higinio Nuñez, a U.S. Army veteran who came to the clinic with his daughter, looking to get an updated prescription and new glasses. Nuñez says he qualifies for vision benefits with the VA but would have to travel to San Francisco for an appointment.

After testing with Weis, Nuñez moves on to an exam with local optometrist Paul Domanchuk, who initially passed on volunteering at the clinic because it would mean closing his practice, which treats mostly MediCal patients, for a day but then volunteered to come when nobody else did.

A couple of days after the clinic has wrapped, after volunteers have packed all the medical equipment — including dental chairs, an X-ray station and optometry lab — back into an 18-wheel truck for the return trip to Sacramento, Ankiewicz tells the Journal she's thankful for the event's sponsors — including the Humboldt Area Foundation and the county Department of Health and Human Services — that made it possible. But she says she's especially thankful for all the volunteers, folks from near and far who showed up to do everything from directing traffic to pulling teeth.

"We would not have been able to be there without them," she says.

A few days earlier, over the din of drills and suction devices in the dental area while the clinic's first day was in full swing, Lewis removes his mask and smock for a brief break. He says he's already pulled 15 teeth, and lost count of how many patients he's seen.

Having been the driving force behind the clinic — first convincing CareForce to come to Humboldt, then helping raise the $75,000 needed to cover the costs of the two-day event, then recruiting local volunteers — Lewis says he's pleased. He says he's disappointed they couldn't get more providers to turn out, though he's grateful for those who did and still hopeful to make this an annual event.

"I'm smiling," he says. "I'm really pleased with all the volunteers who came together to make this possible."

Back in the vision lab, Gilbert Lares is waiting for his new, free glasses. Everything, he says, has gone smoothly.

"I'm happy I came," he says.

Thadeus Greenson (he/him) is the Journal's news editor. Reach him at (707) 442-1400, extension 321, or [email protected].