Terre Donaldson has been a nurse anesthetist in a wide range of medical fields. After retirement, she began volunteering for California CareForce’s free health clinics, drawn to lending her skills by the astounding need for healthcare she has seen.
She recalls one woman at the last CareForce clinic held in Humboldt two years ago who was afraid to have her blood sugar taken before a vision exam.
After attempting to leave the building, some volunteers caught up to her, consoling her and explaining how blood sugar levels can impact vision exam results. She eventually agreed. By the end of the visit, Donaldson says, the woman had picked out a pair of shiny purple glasses covered in rhinestones and was strutting around the clinic with a newfound sense of confidence.
“Patients are so, so grateful, and they walk out and hug everybody, it really is an emotional event sometimes,” Donaldson says.
The California CareForce team, including Donaldson, will be returning to Humboldt County to host another free clinic from Nov. 6-8 at the Eureka Municipal Auditorium, where anyone can receive dental, vision and medical services at no cost.
The clinic is expecting to receive more than 1,000 patients during the three days, with treatments ranging from vision exams and tooth extractions to medical checkups and sports physicals for student athletes, none of which will require an ID or insurance. A Care-A-Van mobile shower will be available in the nearby Veterans Memorial Building parking lot on the first day of the clinic from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The clinic will also try to set patients up with a permanent provider in the area for continued services.
A branch of the California Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, California CareForce is dedicated to community service, seeing 5,300 patients last year, more than a third of whom had jobs but couldn’t get insurance or afford co-pays. With only two full-time staff, the organization depends on local medical professionals and members of the community where they set up shop to donate their time.
CareForce Executive Director Cyndi Ankiewicz says she has also noticed an increasing number of patients in need of care at the clinics. She says cuts to Medi-Cal, Denti-Cal and Medicare, due to new federal restrictions and state budget limits, could result in two million Californians losing their healthcare by 2030. Meanwhile, costs for insurance and medical services have increased, compounded with annual inflation, Ankiewicz adds.
In Humboldt’s case, there’s even more barriers to care, including the small number of providers, very few of whom are currently taking on new patients.
“We saw two years ago a lot of people claimed or said that they had insurance but they just didn’t have a provider to go to, or they had to wait six months to get a filling or something like that,” Ankiewicz says. “Or they had to go 100 miles away to have a provider for insurance. So that’s a specific need for Humboldt County, and it’s a need that we have in California in all the rural communities.”
Ankiewicz recommends patients get in line early due to the number of people in need of services, describing how disheartening it was for the staff to turn away 300 patients back in 2024 due to capacity limits. Hoping to offset that, this year’s clinic will include an additional day at a larger facility. Each clinic also includes a priority line for veterans.
“By the time we usually get there around 4:45 or 5 in the morning, there was already a line of people sitting in chairs, wrapped in blankets, waiting for us,” Ankiewicz says. “And we didn’t open the doors officially for the public until 7 … which is why we try to be respectful and very cognizant of the timing for the people who are waiting outside. So if it starts to look like we’ve met capacity, we may not be able to see everyone at that point, we try to let them know so they can leave and come back the next day.”
Stacy Bragg, California CareForce’s president and an optometrist, emphasized the importance of vision exams at the clinics, saying patients should receive one even if they have never had their eyes checked and their vision seems fine.
“There are some eye diseases like glaucoma, so we would be able to check eye pressure, because glaucoma is kind of the silent death of sight,” Bragg says. “You don’t really notice until your peripheral vision’s gone sometimes, if it’s something that’s not routinely checked on. And then looking in the back of the eye, there’s diseases that we can detect as well … it’s not just eye health, it’s systemic health too.”
| How to Help Volunteer: California CareForce is looking for help from healthcare professionals in medical, dental and vision fields. General volunteers are also needed for clinic setup and teardown, line control, patient guides, patient registration and checkout and volunteer check-ins. Healthcare professionals must have malpractice insurance along with current required medical licenses. Medical students also have an opportunity to learn through the clinics. Dentistry students will be coming from the University of the Pacific and Loma Linda University and nurse practitioner students will be visiting from the University of California at Davis. “Our patient experience is really important, but our volunteer experience is super important also,” Natalia Ankiewicz says. “We are a team and we can’t do what we do without them. They are pretty much the heart of our entire clinic. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to have a clinic.” Those who are interested can fill out a registration form at volunteers.californiacareforce.org/ Donate: California CareForce’s Pints for Patients event on Oct. 15 (see below) will donate $1 per pint to the Humboldt clinic, along with proceeds from a silent auction. There will also be a local fundraiser with Dutch Bros on Nov. 8. Donations go toward dental and medical supplies, prescription eyeglasses, volunteer support, facility costs and other resources. “In-kind” donations are also being accepted, including food and drinks. Monetary donations can be made at www.californiacareforce.org/Donate. For more information, call (916) 749-4170, email info@californiacareforce.org or visit californiacareforce.org/. Updates on clinics can also be found on California CareForce’s Facebook page and Instagram account. |
Dental care is similar in how tooth health can impact the rest of the body, according to Ankiewicz.
“You could literally die from the infections from your mouth,” Ankiewicz says. “People go to urgent cares or emergency rooms because of infections in their mouth, because of bad teeth that just need to be fixed, which we can do. So it really has so much more impact in a person’s quality of life and just living.”
Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator Natalia Ankiewicz notes the clinics can help improve that quality of life in ways many people take for granted.
“One patient was able to get a job because she was able to see again with her glasses,” Natalia Ankiewicz says. “And because of that, she’s had a reoccurring job and then she was able to stay in that position and grow because she was able to read the documents, fill out information, which she couldn’t do when she didn’t have her glasses.”
This year’s campaign for the Humboldt clinic has raised $65,000 so far. A three-day clinic is estimated to cost $142,000 to run, Cyndi Ankiewicz says, so the campaign has a way to go. Future fundraising efforts include the Pints for Patients event at Paskenta Mad River Brewing on Oct. 15, from 5 to 9 p.m., including live music and a silent auction.
The Humboldt clinic is also still in need of optometrists and ophthalmologists to operate the vision care section, along with an additional medical doctor for Sunday. Cyndi Ankiewicz describes how rewarding one of their volunteer dentists found the clinic work, a sentiment repeatedly shared by others who lend their time to the effort.
“He gets there and after a 10-day session, he’s energized, he’s excited, his soul is full,” Cyndi Ankiewicz says. “And that’s what we hear all the time is that their soul is full, being able to give back and really make an impact, that that’s all that matters. And they don’t have that in their day-to-day life, oftentimes.”
Donaldson’s hope for this year’s clinic is that no one will have to be turned away, noting the number of Californians in need of care, even when they have insurance and jobs, was what inspired her to join California CareForce in the first place.
“It makes me very sad in the world that we live in today,” Donaldson says. “Here we are in the wealthiest country in the world, and we can’t provide for our own folks — basic healthcare.”
Griffin Mancuso is a California Local News Fellow placed with North Coast Journal, Inc. Reach him at (707) 442-1400, or griffin@northcoastjournal.com. The California Local News Fellowship is a state-funded initiative to support and strengthen local news reporting. Learn more about it at fellowships.journalism.berkeley.edu/cafellows.
This article appears in Gold in the Cracks.