When Rodger Uchizono began volunteering with Flying Samaritans in 1981, he’d chat with each pilot en route to Baja California, Mexico, where the Los Angeles-area dentist and other American medical professionals went to provide primary care in towns and villages each weekend.

For the nine years he participated in the organization’s medical missions, Uchizono said, he considered flights in the small aircraft “very passive if you don’t know what’s going on.” He asked pilots about such things as what the buttons and dials are for and how an airplane flies—“just like a kid, when the parent is driving and the kid wants to know, and watches you drive and asks questions,” Uchizono said.

With his own children grown, Uchizono in 2006 resumed participating in the missions. That was when he also decided to take flying lessons, learning in a Cessna 172 at John Wayne Airport. When he earns his certification, Uchizono will play two roles: pilot and volunteer dentist.

One hundred fifty pilots now participate in Flying Samaritans, a 10-chapter, all-volunteer organization with members throughout the southwest, primarily in California. Flying Samaritans provides medical care at 22 clinics in Baja, 15 of which also treat dental patients. The 1,500 volunteers—no one at Flying Samaritans is paid—include approximately 600 medical providers, along with interpreters, and support staff. The further a volunteer lives from Mexico, the shorter into the country he or she travels. That helps keep each flight to about three and a half hours.

“It’s a rare bird, a rare pilot, to do that, to say, ‘I’ll take the time to ferry three people to Mexico to provide health care,’” said Uchizono, the dental coordinator for Flying Samaritans’ Orange County chapter. “They aren’t people up there just joyriding. Without GA, the Flying Samaritans wouldn’t exist.”

Volunteers pay their own way. Uchizono raises some money from patients in his home practice. In the Irvine office stands a digital frame that displays photographs of the Mexican clinics where he volunteers. Next to it is an envelope. The California patients contribute generously, Uchizono said.

Volunteers’ involvement varies, with some medical providers participating once a year and others every other month, said Yehoram Uziel, the organization’s president and, like Uchizono, a member of the Orange County chapter. The chapter works directly with two clinics: in Santa Ynez and in Jesus Maria. The airplanes arrive in Mexico by 11 a.m. on Saturdays, and patients are seen until late afternoon. Some volunteers fly back the same day, while others stay overnight.

Pilots at the Foothill chapter make an additional stop along the way, picking up dental students in Mexicali so that they can observe the appointments at the Bahia de Los Angeles clinic. The pilots and other volunteers also are working to construct a new building for the Jesus Maria clinic.

Uziel mentioned one of the Orange County chapter’s greatest successes: Jazmin Ramos, a 15-year-old girl who told a visiting dentist of a bulge in her mouth.

It turned out to be a tumor. Uziel persuaded the dean of the dental school at Universidad Autónoma de Baja California to provide an operating room, gratis. Uziel brought two American dental surgeons to the school in Mexicali to perform the operation in 2007; the tumor was benign. Mexican dentists provided follow-up care. Flying Samaritans has since flown Jazmin to Mexicali for periodic examinations to assure that she remains tumor-free.

Another success: a 19-year-old girl with a rare disease that will require complete reconstruction of all her teeth. On Uchizono’s most recent visit to Jesus Maria, he set to work replacing her teeth: grinding them and building crowns, one by one. Within two years, Lliana will have a full set of new teeth.

“Without GA, it would not be possible,” said Uziel, who figured that he flew his Cessna 182RG to Mexico 18 times last year alone and has visited Mexico approximately 500 times since 1992.

“Most of what we do is in areas that it would take a day to drive to because the roads are so bad and [the villages] are so remote,” he said. “The only way to take a [provider] in is to fly them on GA in a small airplane. We land on dirt, short strips—authorized strips that can take a single or maybe a small twin [engine airplane]. It’s all GA. You can’t do it otherwise.”

Victor Jones, a pilot who serves as president of the Orange County chapter, said that he has seen children grow up during his eight years in the organization. He appreciates the friendships that have formed between Mexicans and Americans thanks to the trips.

Most important, though, is that patients’ lives “would be severely impacted because they wouldn’t get the services” in the absence of the weekly visits, he said. “It takes a lot of my time, but it’s very, very rewarding. … You can’t pay enough to get this kind of reward.”

Seminar to offer classes on medical flights

Flying Samaritans will host a cruise-seminar from Oct. 23 through 26 that will provide FAA Wings Pilot Proficiency Program credits for pilots and continuing medical education classes for health care providers. Classes will relate to the organization’s mission of flying providers to underserved areas in Baja California, Mexico. Twelve sessions will be offered to pilots covering such topics as rules when crossing the border, flight safety, weather forecasting, and emergency landings in Mexico. The cruise will depart from and return to Long Beach, Calif. For information, contact Flying Samaritans president Yehoram Uziel or call 818/943-2693.— By Hillel Kuttler