Mission Viejo Doctor Is Hometown Hero to People in Central America

Helping others has always been a passion for Mission Viejo’s own, Dr. Ronald Richmond. The Monarch HealthCare and Oso Family Medical Group doctor is part of a group called Hope worldwide Community Service Brigades, an international charity that has been changing lives in poor regions of the less developed world for decades.

These days, Dr. Richmond is winding down after yet another volunteer trip. This time it was a return visit he made in November to El Salvador. He, along with his wife and one of his sons, joined several doctors and scores of volunteers from around U.S. who teamed up with local Salvadoran physicians to treat some 500 patients.

“It was amazing to see some of the same people one year later,” says Dr. Richmond about meeting up with folks he had previously treated. “They were so appreciative of the continued efforts to help them in their need. The days were filled with joy, but the daily reality for the people is currently bleak.”

He noticed how so many people in El Salvador live in fear because of the widespread gang violence and streetside extortion there that have caused the Central American country have one of the highest homicide rates in the world.

In one case, at a clinic set up at a rural school, an 80-year-old woman was complaining of fatigue and loss of appetite. But upon gentle questioning, Dr. Richmond discovered there was really nothing medically wrong with her. What he found was that she was greatly fearful about the lives of her grandchildren because some of her own children had been killed during the country’s brutal civil war of the 1980s.

“At the end of the visit I told her that of course there was no pill that could help her,” Dr. Richmond recalls. “She smiled at me and Jose, my interpreter who had grown up in San Salvador, and said she knew that, but she appreciated our time and caring.”

Dr. Richmond remembers during the previous brigade visit to El Salvador he met a man at the clinic who had been walking the streets with a chronic infection on his leg. “He walked in off the street for help. With my 17-year-old son Andrew there to help clean and dress the wound, we were able to help. We gave him a month’s worth of antibiotics, which was all he needed to get his leg to heal. He was very appreciative, and that was just a great moment,” says the Mission Viejo doctor.

Earlier this year, Dr. Richmond and a group of medical workers went to Guatemala. It was his second trip to that nation. The journey, however, was no easy trek. He saw over 700 patients and probably 100 patients were seen by the dentist. “So it was a busy two and a half days of clinic,” the doctor admits.

Dr. Richmond continues to be deeply touched by the personal stories he can share from his travels. He feels it’s those stories that make the trips and personal expenses all worthwhile.

“Volunteer work was always a way for me to give back and to see other parts of the world. It’s very encouraging to the people to be able to have medical professionals from America come in and help those in need,” says Dr. Richmond, who usually is accompanied by his wife and both of his children. “It’s a family affair, no question.”

So far, Dr. Richmond has been to Guatemala twice, once to Nicaragua and twice to El Salvador. “We go into the community and organize it through one of the churches which is able to bring in a lot of patients from the community. In Guatemala, they actually have a school in one of the poorer neighborhoods. We’re able to take care of both the kids and all of their families and provide medical care,” explains Dr. Richmond.

The Mission Viejo doctor continues: “Usually there are five or six doctors, maybe a dentist as well as other volunteers from all walks of life. The medical volunteers bring in medications and set up a pharmacy so patients can get the medicines they need for high blood pressure or diabetes for the next six months. Everyone works together to see the patients, teach them how to brush their teeth, give them a toothbrush, toothpaste, give them vitamins for the next six months.”

Dr. Richmond never quite feels that his work is done, and looks forward to going soon on his next medical brigade mission. He is optimistic about what can be accomplished and the positive impacts on people. During the last visit to El Salvador, he noticed that the Hope worldwide clinic site, the school, was once a prisoner-of-war camp during the civil war. Many locals were held captive there and even killed.

“Perhaps now as the sight of a school and a free clinic to help the people,” he says, “it can be a seed of hope for the area.”

Ronald Richmond, M.D., a family medicine doctor for Oso Family Medical Group and member of Monarch HealthCare medical group, has been practicing locally since 1997. He finished his medical training in 1991 and is an alumni of Duke University and North Carolina Medical School