High-flying volunteer spirit drives Lodi Rotary member to help
For at least four years, Lodi-Tokay Rotary Club member Jack Olson has been helping provide access to medical care to an impoverished town in Mexico, and has asked his fellow club members to join his efforts.
Olson has been working with the Flying Samaritans Mother Lode Chapter, a group of physicians, dentists, optometrists, volunteers and pilots from all over the Sacramento metropolitan area that come together to provide access to the people of San Quintin, Mexico. The pilots fly health care professionals and volunteers on private jets to hold a clinic there every second Saturday, every month of the year. According to Olson, the Mother Lode chapter offers a medical, dental and vision clinic.
“We are the only medical service in the area,” he said. “People come from over 50 miles around just to get their teeth checked and get their glasses. They come from all over the place. The people down there are so grateful for us coming down there. It’s very heart warming.”
There are usually four to six aircraft that fly into San Quintin each trip. They come in on a Friday, and the clinic is open that Saturday morning. An advertisement on the radio notifies the residents of when the clinic is open and what services will be available.
“The clinic is opened until all the patients are seen and we don’t go home until (Sunday),” Olson said.
The volunteers and health professionals fly back home on Sunday morning.
Olson participates in these trips as a volunteer with the vision clinic at least twice a year, once in September or October and once in March.
“When I go down, I operate this piece of equipment that takes pictures of the patients’ eyes and it tell us what prescription of glasses the patients need,” he said.
Glasses are donated from all over the area, and Olson said Folsom Prison has a machine that takes the donated glasses and identifies the prescription on them.
“Folsom Prison will take these donated glasses and sort them out by prescription like plus one, plus two, plus three, so when we examine a patient we can say you need a plus 2. There is bag or a box of plus 2’s and they can pick out what they like and try them on to see if they’re accurate,” Olson said.
They give between 80 to 100 eye exams every month, Olson said. He recalled a memory from one of his past trips that really stood out to him.
“This one grandmother came in for glasses and she brought her granddaughter in with her,” Olson said. “Then when we fitted her with glasses she looked at her granddaughter and said ‘Oh you’re so pretty. I’ve never seen you before.’ The grandmother got tears in her eyes because she could finally see her granddaughter. It’s those types of stories that make you feel good.”
According to Olson, having an organizations like the Flying Samaritans is important because it provides the people of San Quintin and surrounding areas access to medical care that they wouldn’t have otherwise. There is no social security and some of the people living there only make $10 a day working the tomato fields, he said. Most of the homes have dirt floors, and there is only one paved road in the entire town, Olson said.
The Mother Lode Chapter is making a difference in people’s lives, Olson said, and that’s what motivates him to stay involved.
He recalled when one of their patients had a heart defect that would have been an easy fix in the U.S.
“She was having such a problem that she could not walk for more than 15 yards without having to stop and catch her breath because her heart valve wasn’t working right,” Olson said.
However, the treatment required placing a stent in her heart, and because of the limited access to medical care and supplies, she was unable to get it treated until she reached her teens.
“We actually got permission to fly this woman up to UC Davis to have her heart fixed, which was a very simple procedure, and fly back at no cost,” he said.
Olson became involved with the Mother Lode Chapter because he worked with one of the pilots at F&M Bank for years. The coworker purchased a plane upon his retirement and got involved with the cause.
“When he told me about it, I thought it was the perfect Rotary International project,” said Olson, who was a member of the Folsom Rotary Club before recently returning to Lodi and rejoining the Lodi-Tokay Rotary Club. “Rotary has been a major funding source for this Flying Samaritan chapter.”
Rotary clubs all over Sacramento and surrounding areas already sponsor the Mother Lode Chapter, and the Lodi-Tokay Rotary Club is planning to be the next one to join the cause.
“The club is considering sponsoring this group they haven’t committed to any trips or anything yet,” Olson said.
According to Olson, adequate funding is a necessity because the chapter provides all kinds of medical equipment, supplies and medication needed for the patients. It cost about $1,000 a month to fund the clinic, he said. Health professionals and volunteers pay for their food, travel and lodging out of pocket.