In the Community Clinic

Excerpt from The Tico Times

The white folks wearing matching white t-shirts were wiping the swat off their foreheads when a woman, standing out from the sea of white shirts dressed in a red sundress, carried in a 9-year-old Costa Rican quadriplegic girl with cerebral palsy. 

The young girl, Ambar Esquivel, who cannot walk on her own, was there to meet several therapists and receive a wheelchair made specifically for her. 

Robbie Felix, the woman in the red sundress, picked up the mother and daughter in her white SUV and brought them to the site of the weeklong clinic in the retired teachers’ building about 15 minutes outside of Quepos, a port town on the central Pacific coast.

They were greeted by 19 volunteers in white Fundación Roberta Felix t-shirts, who completed a thorough evaluation of Ambar through a translator. While the therapist and mother talked, Sara Moore took Ambar’s measurements and began sifting through boxes and suitcases looking for appropriately sized pieces to build a wheelchair.

Moore, who sells wheelchairs for a living in Texas, was on her fourth trip to Costa Rica to help fit children into donated wheelchairs.

“I don’t relax very well, so this is a good vacation for me,” Moore said, fanning herself in the thick tropical heat.

Moore met Felix, owner of Hotel California, while she was on a previous mission trip. The two women stayed in touch and Felix invited her to help with the project in Quepos.

“I’ve been selling wheelchairs for 25 years now,” Moore said, “and coming here makes me remember why I do this. These families are so grateful, whereas the families at home just expect this.”

She claims her reasons for coming are not completely selfless.

“There is no better feeling than doing something for somebody and they walk out smiling.” She said. “You should see it. ‘Thank you so much’ and ‘We really appreciate it’ and they cry and it’s just great. It’s a great feeling to know you’ve done something good. It makes you sleep well at night.”

On the last day of the clinic, Felix drove all over the area picking up people who had no other way to get to the clinic.

“The reason we’re doing this clinic,” Felix said, “ is to get all these kids a proper evaluation and then they can come here on a regular basis to get therapy.”

Felix says because most services are in San Jose, and some are in Puntarenas (a Pacific port city several hours farther north), living in Quepos is extremely hard on people with health problems.

“Mom gets up at the crack of dawn,” Felix said, describing the trials and tribulations she’s heard several times, “finds someone to take care of the rest of her kids and spends hours traveling and waiting to get one hour of therapy for her kid at the public hospital. So they don’t get therapy. They just don’t get therapy. It’s too difficult.”

That’s why Felix’s foundation is building a therapy center for children and young adults in the area, who wouldn’t otherwise have access to care and therapy. The center will officially open on (September 24th), when one of Felix’s best friends and major donors will be able to attend.

“Otherwise, where are these kids going to go,” she asks with a desperate twinge in her voice. “I mean, seriously, where are they going to go? They can’t even leave the house. If they have a wheelchair, they can’t use it on the sidewalks because the sidewalks have holes in them. They can’t go anywhere downtown because the buildings aren’t accessible. The parents have to carry these kids around and if they’re too big, what do they do?”

written by Betsy Yagla of the Tico Times

July 23, 2004

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