Among this country’s most glaring divisions is our unequal access to on-demand high-quality health care.

Here on the South Coast, many undocumented residents do not qualify for any form of county, state or federal health insurance coverage. It can be easy to justify putting off that eye exam, dental check-up, STD test or flu vaccine when you’re paying out of pocket for everything.

Even with health insurance, convenience and accessibility are major factors for South Coast residents. It can be hard to take time off work and find transportation to visit a doctor’s office more than an hour away.

Enter Molly Wolfes and the Puente Health Fair. Wolfes, Puente’s Community Health Coordinator, had the idea to bring dozens of regional health care providers together for a daylong one-stop shop for health and wellness: free check-ups, screenings, education, games and music.

“My goal has been to advocate for the part of our population that has the least power and the least voice, the least opportunity to access health care on their own,” says Wolfes.

Molly Wolfes announces raffle winners at the First Annual Health Fair in 2014.

Last year’s inaugural Health Fair attracted more than 200 people from Pescadero, La Honda, San Gregorio and Loma Mar – a major accomplishment for any community event, let alone a health-related one in its first year.

This year’s Health Fair will be even bigger, with more health education booths, more medical services and health screenings, more interactivity and more fun. It will take place on Sunday, October 4th from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Pescadero Elementary School, 620 North Street. 

“This is fun with a purpose,” declares Karen Hackett, a San Mateo County Public Health Nurse who is stationed with Puente a few days each week. Hackett will run a flu clinic at the Health Fair, administering free flu shots alongside other county health workers.

The health fair will be family friendly again this year with the return of the bike rodeo – a hands-on bicycle safety activity by Ecology Action that teaches kids hand signals and gives them an obstacle course to navigate. Kids will also be fitted with bike helmets they get to keep.

Children practice bike safety skills at the bike rodeo.

Puente will do face painting (fruits and vegetables). The Half Moon Bay Library will read aloud from children’s books on food and healthy eating. Pie Ranch will help run Puente’s blender bikes, which make smoothies powered by pedaling, and kids will get a chance to sample their creations and talk about why the ingredients are good for them.

The ‘Re-think your drink’ nutrition quiz from San Mateo County Family Health Services uses the same concept – but with prizes for the correct answer to questions such as: ‘Name five fruits of different colors.’ With limited options for groceries on the South Coast, it can be hard to stock up on the healthiest foods. But when parents cut corners, the whole family suffers, says Mayra Diaz, a county Community Program Specialist and health educator.

“Making a healthier choice is a big part of long-term health. We understand that Latinos are at higher risk in terms of access to healthy food and certain chronic diseases,” she says.

While their kids are having fun and learning about nutrition, parents can pop into the elementary school’s multipurpose room to get a dental check up, a skin cancer screening, a vision and hearing test, check their blood pressure, receive a flu shot, and get blood tests for cholesterol and diabetes. They can learn about safe sex and family planning from Planned Parenthood, get 20-minute STD tests in the privacy of a medical van, and discuss their mental health with Puente’s own Clinical Director, Joann Watkins.

Parts of the Health Fair have especially local twists: nurse Stephanie Cousin lives in Butano Canyon and works with the Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s Dermatology Department, which will offer skin cancer exams on a first-come, first-served basis. (There will not be enough privacy for patients to disrobe completely, but only to check exposed areas of skin).

“It’s important for people to check their skin themselves and if there’s something they’re worried about, they can come along and get it checked out,” she says. “Even if we only find one suspicious lesion on one attendee out of all the screenings, then our presence was worth it.” The screening itself will increase awareness of the need to do regular skin checks.

But health care needs on the South Coast aren’t just skin deep, of course.

Many local farm workers do work that involves the potential for chronic physical injury because of years of stooping, cutting, kneeling, and lifting. This year, a La Honda resident, Deanna Anderson, will offer a guided interactive healthy back stretching session for farm workers and other attendees, accompanied by music. Two physical therapists will also be on hand to work with anyone who is in pain.

For some farm workers, this day of health screenings may be the only medical attention they’re going to get this year. That’s because of a complication in the laws that govern eligibility for health insurance, which is determined by someone’s earnings.

If a farm worker is not a U.S. citizen, he or she could still apply for ACE, San Mateo County’s health coverage program. But not if a worker’s monthly earnings surpass the poverty-level threshold to qualify, as Wolfes explains. During the summer, when there is more work in the fields (with 10- to 12- hour days and a greater chance for self-injury), laborers earn too much to qualify for the county’s insurance program. (The cutoff is $1,900 a month.) Puente’s own medical clinic, operated by the San Mateo Medical Center’s Coastside Clinic, would not be able to treat them.

In those situations, workers “rely on screenings and flu shots and pay out of pocket for services only in an emergency,” says Wolfes.

Which is why Puente is working hard to reach farm workers this year and get them over to the Health Fair to see those specialists, including those from the San Mateo Health System,  for free. She hopes they will schedule follow up visits for the winter when the work is slower and they may qualify for health insurance.

The situation is far from ideal, and very frustrating. “There’s nothing worse than getting screened, knowing something is wrong, and not being able to do anything about it,” she says. “We will have community health workers/promotoras de salud there to help follow up with people who will need further assistance and exams and making sure they get in to care one way or another.” Thanks to support from the San Mateo County Healthcare for the Homeless/Migrant Seasonal Farmworker Program, farmworker participants will be provided with first aid kits and other items to support good health.

The bike blenders will be on hand for participants to make their own smoothies.

For those who do qualify, Puente will have experts on hand to talk people through the process of signing up, renewing, and using Covered California, Medi-Cal, Medicare and county programs like ACE and Healthy Kids.

The Health Fair is Spanish-English bilingual and accessible to all, with translators on hand and free transportation provided by Puente and community volunteers. Health Fair funders include the Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital, the San Mateo County Commute Alternatives Program, Mills-Peninsula Health Services, San Mateo County Healthcare for the Homeless/Migrant Seasonal Farmworker Program, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Puente’s second annual Health Fair is Sunday, October 4th from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Pescadero Elementary School, 620 North Street. Admission, activities, and health screenings are free. Healthy food will be sold onsite to benefit the La Honda-Pescadero School District. For details, contact Molly Wolfes at 650-262-5989.

It’s no small accomplishment to be indispensable to your community. That’s true of Catherine Peery, who has spent years working to make Pescadero a better, healthier, more resilient community. But to hear her tell it, it’s Pescadero that was indispensable to her.

Peery has a lot of appellatives. She is a mother, a community organizer, a philanthropist, an affordable housing warrior and a ham radio operator. She has wire-rimmed glasses and a plainspoken manner. She runs one of the most well known companies in town, Peery & Associates, which does pension administration. She is on the board of the Pescadero Foundation and KPDO, a Pescadero radio station she is working to revive with a new, $56,000 grant from San Mateo County Supervisor Don Horsley’s office.

She is also a close friend of Puente and makes recurring monthly donations as a member of Puente Partners for Sustainability. When Puente does its back-to-school backpack drive each year, students can always count on 50 scientific calculators from Peery & Associates.

Peery discovered Butano Canyon, a redwood enclave outside Pescadero – “heaven,” she says, “God’s gift to the world” – on Memorial Day weekend in 1989 during a road trip with her late husband. They left Fremont and moved to “the Butano,” as it is locally known, just two months later with their children in tow.

“The Coastside was a lot less expensive in those days,” recalls Peery. “And the kids just thrived.”

It was a time of joy. But it wasn’t long before Peery was struck by all the things the South Coast lacked: a political voice within San Mateo County. A plan to address seasonal flooding from Pescadero Creek. A sewage plant. Affordable housing for teachers and the farm workers she saw in the fields who were living in lean-tos and barracks or sometimes, without a roof over their heads.

Catherine Peery

Peery found common cause with Carol Young-Holt, the “fairy godmother” of Puente. Young-Holt helped found the South Coast Collaborative in 1997 to leverage county services and private funds to address the needs of Pescadero’s least fortunate residents. Their vehicle was a nonprofit called North Street Community Resource Center, which formally merged with Puente in 2007.

Peery joined the Pescadero Municipal Advisory Council, which leverages the county’s support to solve problems on the South Coast, and served as chair for 8 years. She teamed up with Lynne Bowman, another local, to push for the construction of new houses on a vacant site west of downtown Pescadero.

It’s not just farm workers who can’t afford to buy homes, she explains. It’s local teachers, too. But Peery and Bowman kept running into walls.

“There’s no political will to build affordable housing here unless it’s downtown. But unless we get a package wastewater treatment plant, it’s not going to happen,” she says.

Puente is in the midst partnering with the County to conduct a survey of local farm worker housing as a way to quantify just how much affordable housing is needed. The results may help Puente and its partners push for new housing.

“All the entities that have any influence out here need to work together,” she says. “Puente is a godsend to this community. They do so much.”

Peery shares Puente’s vision of a sustainable South Coast where the local economy does not rely on tourism, and includes sustainable growth. One of Puente’s central goals is to empower all local residents, Hispanic and Caucasian, to advocate for themselves and their children with the same can-do attitude Peery has displayed.

Peery has found common cause with Puente a number of times. In fact, Puente has often followed in Peery’s footsteps . In 2012, the Pescadero Foundation used its “Educate to Elevate” initiative to give $900 to every graduating Pescadero High School senior that year who had a plan to go on to college. The Foundation ended up giving away $25,000 — monies put aside for the youth when they entered kindergarten.

“Just about every kid in that class has gone on to college and moved forward in life,” says Peery.

Puente has its own college scholarship program called the Youth Bridges Award, which gives graduating seniors money for books and tuition. Any local youth who has earned a salary with Puente while in high school is eligible. Peery has been a devoted supporter of the program.

Peery’s desire to help local families may trace its origins back to her own upbringing in Pacifica. She grew up with a single mom and six siblings. They struggled to make ends meet, and Peery still remembers the people who pitched in and helped the family buy groceries and make payments.

The South Coast is only as strong as the people in the wider community who stand up for it. If strength itself is a factor, Peery might widely be judged a pillar of the community. But she resists this designation.

“The pillars of our community are immigrant families. They are very tight, very stable, very enterprising. We can’t ignore that they’re good people who deserve better,” she days.

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