Gift Heals Heart and Soul : Medicine: Encinitas surgeon’s volunteer group to receive presidential honor for changing the lives of disfigured young people.

Dr. Dennis Nigro believes that everyone deserves the right to a life without disfigurement. For hundreds of children and young adults without much money, that right becomes reality in the Encinitas offices of the reconstructive surgeon.

Today the 44-year-old doctor and his 150 volunteers will receive a Presidential Point of Light award for their efforts in solving a pressing problem without government support.

Nigro brushed off the personal recognition with a shrug. The program, Fresh Start Surgical Gifts, is “a team effort,” he said. “It’s like a winning football team and the quarterback gets all the publicity. I wouldn’t be able to do this without all those volunteers.”

Actually, Nigro and Fresh Start volunteers have received little recognition and no pay for their innovative project. About every eight weeks, a surgical team assembles at Nigro’s offices on Santa Fe Drive to begin a weekend marathon operating-room session that starts at 7 a.m. and sometime lasts until the wee hours of Sunday morning before the last patient leaves.

Patients accepted by Fresh Start are young and unable to pay for the surgery to remove the scars or growths that make them outcasts, said Leslie Kelley, executive director. Erasing disfigurements such as cleft palates and birthmarks is often classified as cosmetic surgery by insurance companies, which refuse to pay for the operations, Kelley said.

Nigro, a 1969 graduate of Notre Dame, spent a dozen years in Mexico and Central and South America using his surgical skills to help the poor before coming to Encinitas.

Since 1986, he has treated hundreds of disfigured patients at his North County facility.

Some of his patients come from Mexico, where he spent much of his time as a traveling medic. Fresh Start volunteers arrange for free transportation and place patients in rooms donated by local motels during the recovery period. Meals also are provided, and all services are without charge.

In recent months, Nigro and volunteers have aided more local families, including one whose breadwinner had lost his job. The man was unable to pay to alter the scars his daughter was left with after being severely cut by walking through a glass door. Nigro decided the girl needed major skin grafts to prevent permanent scarring.

Among his patients have been Romanian orphans and a young Navy recruit who had been discharged because of a deviated septum. Nigro and another surgeon, Dr. William Flynn of La Jolla, repaired the Romanian youngsters’ deformities and repaired the nose of the recruit, who was accepted back into the service.

Until Fresh Start incorporated as a nonprofit organization last spring, Nigro bore all the expenses with the help of the Notre Dame alumni organization in the San Diego area. Expenses have grown to a point that the group is seeking contributions to cover the cost of materials and patients’ expenses, Kelley said.

Tax-deductible contributions can be sent to Fresh Start, 351 Santa Fe Drive, Suite 1, Encinitas, CA 92024.