Blake's Blog

40 Kilometers in a leaky old boat

The year was 1982. My twin brother and I were college freshman on Spring Break. No,
we were not packed into a trendy bar in Mexico. Instead we were in a well-used 22-foot
sailboat making our first unescorted passage from Alamitos Bay in Long Beach to Avalon
on Catalina Island. Armed only with a compass and a healthy dose of free spirit, we
arrived in Avalon a bit soggy but still afloat. We anchored the boat, paddled our cheap
raft to shore and headed for the only pizza place on the island - Antonio’s. The original
Antonio’s was a “hole-in-the-wall” restaurant with peanut shells on the floor and mini
jukeboxes at each table. We sat down to celebrate our successful voyage and selected
the song by the Four Preps, 26 Miles (Santa Catalina), a catchy tune about the beauty
and romance of Catalina Island.

Little did I know that eight years later I’d be making the trip to Catalina, not for pizza and
beer, but as a dentist treating the island’s children.

For the past 20 years, the Children’s Dental Health Clinic (CDHC) has been providing
dental care at the Avalon School. We started in a donated converted travel trailer that
had an authentic 1950’s vintage look. In the mid-1990’s, the LBUSD kindly donated one
of their old construction trailers, which we converted into our current two operatory clinic.
With the help of LA Care Health Plan, we will replace one old worn-out dental chair
this year.

We send a dental team 2-4 times per month to care for children from birth through high
school, the only game in town for many of our patients. We offer the best quality care;
so if these children have very complex medical or therapeutic issues, we refer them
“over town” to our main clinic in Long Beach. Our dentists and staff members that have
made the journey will attest that it can be a long but very rewarding day.
If you are ever on Catalina, head up to the end of the road by the school and look to
your left – you’ll see our humble little clinic. And if you want a great pizza, Antonio’s is
still a short walk through town, jukeboxes and all. Go ahead and select that Four Preps
song and listen closely to the lyrics. When you hear “forty kilometers in a leaky old
boat... any old thing that’ll stay afloat,” take notice of the local children’s smiles - there’s
a good chance that one of our CDHC dental teams helped make that smile just a bit bigger.