Sun-Sentinel - Ft. Lauderdale
Wed, Nov 12
1997
The nurse is bustling around the trailer, weaving around patients, mentally figuring how she will handle the dozens of farm workers and their children lining up outside for treatment.
Space is cramped _ only a half-dozen patients can fit in the lobby of this makeshift health clinic west of Boynton Beach. The air conditioner is broken, and the only breeze comes from the Spanish-to-English translators who scurry from examination room to examination room to keep up with the doctors. They have to move quickly, or more people _ suffering everything from stomachaches to vision problems _ will have to be turned away again today.
Suddenly, a matronly woman bumps into the nurse, who has to readjust the stethoscope before it slides off her neck.
The nurse sighs. The woman, whom she does not recognize, has been rushing around the lobby, talking to patients.
"Excuse me, are you a doctor?" the nurse asks.
"Oh, no," Caridad Asensio says with a smile.
"Are you a nurse?" the nurse asks, sounding slightly annoyed.
"Oh, no," Asensio answers quickly. "I'm nobody."
Next Wednesday, a new and improved health clinic will open down the street bearing the name of this "nobody," Caridad Asensio. For if she is unknown to the nurse, Caridad Asensio is almost revered within the migrant community.
It is she who founded the Migrant Association in Delray Beach in 1989 to provide low-cost housing to migrant workers. It is she who has scooped up migrants from the fields, providing donated clothing and information about free medical and dental services. It is she who has persuaded doctors and nurses to donate their services each day. And it is she who has raised more than a million dollars since 1996 from South Florida socialites and health organizations for the new health clinic, which sits on seven acres just west of Florida's Turnpike.
"She's a wonderful woman, bless her," Migdalia Montanez says of Asensio as she sits with her son, Richard, inside the stuffy trailer. The 10-year-old boy squirms as he waits for his annual checkup for school.
Montanez, whose husband sometimes works seven days a week picking tomatoes, green peppers and corn, says that after rent on their two-bedroom apartment, there's often no money to speak of. "They got a lot of families that can't pay the doctors," she says.
Families like that of Liz Ramos, 8, who sits on the examination table, her eyes intent on her mother. She has been suffering from a constant earache.
"Oh, yeah, this is bad," says Dr. Max David Lack as he takes a look. "Both ears are badly infected." The infection will be treated with antibiotics, but Lack says if the child were to wait, she would have ear problems and risk eventually losing her hearing.
Her mother, Beatriz Ramos, keeps the child calm with nods and smiles. Through a translator, she explains that her husband's job driving the tractors in the Boynton Beach farms doesn't leave much money for doctor visits. "A regular clinic costs too much money," she says.
It's the concern of many who work in the fields. And the reason they view the 66-year-old Asensio as their salvation.
Asensio left her native Cuba with her mother and 11/2-year-old daughter in 1960, shortly after Fidel Castro took power. "We had to make believe we were leaving for vacation," she says. Her husband stayed behind for two months. And her 4-year-old son was sent to Spain with her sister and brother, although family members in Venezuela intercepted them and helped reunite the family in America.
"It was terrible," Asensio says, her voice choking at the memory. "I didn't know when I was going to see my son again."
The family went first to New York, then moved to Boca Raton in 1971 after her husband's computer company transferred him. It was there, during the 17 years she worked for the Palm Beach County school system, that Asensio became aware of the migrants' needs. She was working as a community resource counselor at the time, and many of the teachers came to her with problems they were having with students.
"[The teachers) said, `Cari, they don't do their homework,' and I say, `Pero, they don't have a table. And they're going to bed at 6 o'clock because there was no light.'
"That was terrible," she says of migrant living conditions, which she saw firsthand while tracking down truants. "You have to remember, those were kids who never saw a dentist in their whole life. The teeth were rotted and the father and mother, the same. . . . I send [the migrants) to particular dentists and they don't charge me."
Thus, Asensio's plan for migrant health care took shape.
Nationwide there are 1.5 million migratory workers and 2.5 million seasonal workers, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Half of those families earn less than $7,500 a year.
Just how many migrant workers are in South Florida is anybody's guess. There are no tracking studies, although experts put the number in Palm Beach County at 30,000 to 50,000. Most of those are in Lake Worth, West Palm Beach and Belle Glade. The number is about 25,000 in Dade County, mostly in Homestead.
And while this segment of the population has the least to spend on medical care, it's the most at risk for illness because of malnutrition, exposure to pesticides and poor housing, the federal agency reports.
Which is why Asensio was inspired _ with the help of friends _ to start the Migrant Association of South Florida in 1989. The Delray Beach group helps workers find housing. There are now 154 mobile homes in Broward and Palm Beach counties, donated by the association to low-income families. The clinic in the trailer came three years later, made possible in part by the Diocese of Palm Beach renting the land for $1 a year. Now comes the new clinic, a scant five years later.
In 1995, President Clinton gave Asensio the President's Service Award _ the silver medallion that is the nation's highest award for volunteerism.
Palm Beach County people recognized her long before that, however.
"She was a go-getter and things got done," says Ernie Camerino, assistant director of employee records and information services for the Palm Beach County School District.
"I used to go out to that trailer on Saturdays, see people crammed into that little room they had, I saw the people there for hours, raining or not. It was very heart-wrenching," says Palm Beach County Commissioner Burt Aaronson. Of the new building, he adds, "It's something that's needed; something that's long overdue."
Comparing the Caridad Health Clinic's three-bedroom trailer to the new site is like equating school cafeteria food with a seven-course gourmet meal. There's a spacious waiting room. Parking spaces so patients won't have to park on the grass. In place of the simple swing in front of the trailer, Asensio is persuading McDonald's restaurants to install a playground. There are X-ray facilities for the first time. And there will be a nursery where babies can wait while their parents are being examined. Already Asensio has lined up local high school girls who want to volunteer to watch the children.
Instead of the current pharmaceutical closet, there will be a spacious room for dispensing medicine. There will more examination and consultation rooms so patients won't have to be turned away _ and they'll be private, not like the consultation rooms now, where paperwork and weigh-ins are completed even as other patients discuss their ailments.
Asensio envisions several extra rooms being used as classrooms to teach English and nutrition.
Currently, about 60 people come to the clinic Tuesdays through Saturdays. The clinic is closed on Sundays and Mondays, as it will be at the new site. Often, as many as 40 people are turned away weekly because of a space shortage.
Still, "they come here and their faces are just smiles when they see a friendly face," says Sister Frances Madigan, the clinic administrator. "They know they can trust us. That's why we exist."
Many of those workers prefer the Caridad Health Clinic to federal assistance either because they are illegal immigrants reluctant to answer too many questions, or because they don't know how to fill out the paperwork, Asensio says. But the majority come simply because the clinic is convenient, right near their workplace.
"And they're comfortable going because it is almost totally Spanish-speaking," says Cecil Bennett, CEO of the Palm Beach Health Care District, which provides free care for families that meet low-income guidelines but earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. "The Caridad Clinic is excellent."
While the clinic has its supporters, however, it is not without its critics.
Greg Schell of the Migrant Farm Worker Justice Project in Belle Glade, which provides legal services to the migrants, questions the location of the new complex, saying it won't serve the long-term needs of the community. Schell foresees the migrants moving north as development pushes westward.
"Anyone who works with farm workers will tell you in 10 years they will move elsewhere in Florida, or fold because of foreign competition," he says.
"She's assuming a static situation, but anyone who works there will tell you it's unlikely. Cari means well, she's a wonderful fund-raiser, but once that zoning gets changed, it's over. The farmers, they're dying to sell their land, they'll make money. The people she wants to serve won't be there."
Not so, says Asensio. At least, "not for now, maybe [in) 10 to 15 years. In the meantime, we'll be here," she says.
Schell also questions how Asensio will maintain the clinic.
The $1.5 million project is still about $55,000 in debt. Major contributors include the Health Foundation of South Florida, which gave $450,000 earlier this year, the Delray Beach-based Forrest C. Lattner Foundation, which gave $500,000 last December and the Count and Countess deHoernle, Boca Raton philanthropists who contributed $250,000.
"She's found a guardian angel so far," Schell says. "A lot of people didn't think this thing would get built. And I hate to throw cold water on something that is obviously an admirable project, but you can only go so many times to the well."
Asensio says the new building is expected to cost $450,000 a year to maintain, between water, electricity and health staff. She says she has had no problem collecting the $258,000 needed for the trailer clinic in the past. And the nice new building, she hopes, will attract more volunteer doctors, nurses and dentists.
But she doesn't like to talk about money _ or about others' doubts.
"Don't do this," she says, when skeptics are mentioned. "Dream your dream. Have hope."
© Copyright 1997, Sun-Sentinel - Ft. Lauderdale.