With massive volunteer effort, two-day clinic treats hundreds

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…