With a big smile on her face, a young black haired woman sat by herself in the small waiting room of the dental clinic. There was only one dental chair inside the clinic, and it was occupied by a middle aged woman whose teeth were being observed by a young dentist. Her personal dental health care was made possible because of the clinic's low cost services.

A project of a non profit organization operation, the dental clinic has operated for 43 years. In the organization's building was a health clinic operated by the clinic for pregnant women and infants. Children also have access to dental care at the clinic. Because of private donations, most especially one made by a certain woman through her will, we were able to keep the clinic in operation. When we had no more foundation to speak of, we looked again at our services and realized that a lot of our services were already being offered by other agencies. The clinic was eventually closed due to lack of funding.

Renting out the main building and remodeling the garage was a decision we chose to make upon finding out that low income persons aren't having their dental needs met. For the conversion of the former garage into a dental office, $10,000 was raised by the organization. The earlier dental clinic had used equipment donated by dentists which were just transferred to the office.

An interview is done to see if prospective patients are eligible for low cost care. The clinic does allow patients who are capable of getting private dental care so that competition with area dentists is avoided. With the help of a sliding scale, the clinic can decide who can use the clinic's services and how much the clinic should charge them. Once the income and number of family members of a person is known, then the clinic knows how much to charge.

If a family has an income of $1,000 or more and consists only of four members, then that family is not qualified for low cost treatment at the clinic. The family, however, can receive dental examination costing only $8 if its monthly income is between $800 and $1,000. An examination fee of $5 is charged to a family that generates an income of less than $800 a month. Dental examinations would cost $15 to $20 if done by private dentists in Santa Fe.

It is common to see patients in their 40's and 50's, and some of them haven't received any dental care in their lives. Mostly children are the patients in the clinic. Clinic dentists gave dental treatment to children who qualified for federally funded special programs of the county early in the winter. Usually, just one program can cover all if not most of the clinic fees.

The clinic presently schedules 20 patients in a week, but the dentists there can welcome more. Since many patients failed to keep their appointments with their dentists, the secretary decided not to include specific times when they were supposed to show up, but she just gave the specific days. A dentist sees the patients who show up on the appointed day on a first come, first served basis. We show those who come in the different ways they can take care of their teeth. The clinic makes it a point to supply toothbrushes and dental floss for its patients who don't use or own any of these dental hygiene products. The teeth of the patients will have improved on the next appointment.