Akron kids get free dental care 40 receive $20,000 in services from
rolling clinic that stops in same towns as its PGA partners
The
worst part is over for Kendra Johnson.
With a quick tug, Dr. Donald MacKay
pulled a bad tooth from the sobbing 7-year-old while dental hygienist Erin Badurina
held her hands. A cotton ball settled in where the infected and abscessed tooth
had been.
At the Christina's Smile mobile clinic, MacKay and Badurina were
among the volunteers who gave free dental care valued at $20,000 to 40 children
Friday.
Nervous children filled the four dental chairs in
the air-conditioned 48-foot trailer parked at Roadway Corp.'s Gorge Boulevard
headquarters. The trailer, one of two owned by the Austin, Texas, charity, is
equipped with the latest X-ray and sterilization equipment.
Kendra will
need work on five other teeth, but MacKay took care of the most pressing problem,
said Diane Stigler, coordinator of Christina's Smile.
Volunteers from South
Street Ministries, who brought Kendra and her mother, Ora Johnson, to the clinic,
were certain they could find additional help locally.
There's plenty of
need in the South Akron neighborhood that South Street Ministries serves, said
volunteer Jane Bechtel.
"There's a lot of people that are working at
low-paying jobs, working hard for their families, but insurance is just out of
their range," she said.
Dr. Richard R. Garza, who founded Christina's
Smile in 1989, said affordable or free dental care is a rarity for low-income
families.
The charity stops in the same towns as its partners, the PGA Tour
and Champions Tour.
It was in Akron on Friday because of the Bridgestone
Invitational and earlier in the week it was in Portland, Ore.
Clinics will
stop in 22 cities this year, with Roadway providing the transportation and its
employees raising funds with golf tournaments, bake sales and raffles, Garza said.
Those
efforts raised $320,000, said Terry Gilbert, Roadway's executive vice president
of sales and marketing. Christina's Smile employs Garza, Stigler and an office
manager, otherwise relying on volunteer dental professionals and donated supplies.
Besides
children from South Street Ministries, children from St. Bernard's Hispanic Development
Project were at the clinic. They were given T-shirts, toothbrushes and toothpaste
after receiving cleanings, fillings, crowns and even root-canal treatments.
Pulling
a tooth is a last resort, Garza said, but advanced decay makes it necessary.
Children
may be in so much pain from the toothache that they are missing school and not
eating well.
"It's hard to function at 100 percent when you're in pain,"
Garza said.
It's rewarding to halt that pain and get the children "on
the road to a much healthier and happier life," he said.
s said.
