A vision of volunteering

Gary Moskowitz

When he looks back on it now, Dr. James McCaffery thinks of his

15 years of medical work in the Copper Canyon area of Mexico as

payback.

McCaffery was honored by colleagues Friday at the Glendale Eye

Medical Group offices for his work in treating patients in Mexico

with poor eye conditions.

He was presented with a soft-toned painting that depicts McCaffery

putting drops in a patient’s eyes, surrounded by patients in a

courtyard in Mexico.

“I felt that what I was doing was payback for all of the things I

have been given,” McCaffery said during a luncheon in his honor. “You

feel as though you owe somebody for the opportunities you are given.”

McCaffery is credited with producing the film, “Esperanza,” which

documents the efforts of Glendale Eye Medical Group doctors in Mexico

from 1980 to 1982. McCaffery retired in 1999 and lives in Santa Fe,

N.M.

Jacki Hanson is a colleague of McCaffery’s and is a member of the

LIGA Foundation of Flying Doctors. The foundation worked with the

local medical group for years in sending doctors to Mexico to not

only perform procedures like cataracts surgery but also club foot and

cleft lip surgeries. Groups that Hanson has accompanied to areas

surrounding Sinaloa, Mexico, have included local orthopedic surgeons,

dentists, plastic surgeons, translators and volunteers.

Often, doctors would give patients sight in one eye that they had

not seen out of for years, Hanson said.

“There are just so many, so many,” Hanson said. “When you do

something as simple as give reading glasses to someone who hasn’t

seen properly in 20 years, it lights up the world for them. These are

things so many of us take for granted.”

The trip to Mexico is an arduous one, according to Glendale Eye

Medical Group Director Stephen Chang.

“It is often hot and humid, and you live and work in primitive

conditions,” Chang said. “Anytime anybody can be made to see, whether

it is a grandmother or a small child, is amazing.”