Coming Full Circle : Service: An Oxnard dentist repays his debt to Head Start by contracting with the program to treat more than 200 low-income children for nominal fees.

When Oxnard dentist Carlos Tamayo sees a 4-year-old patient cowering in his office, he is reminded of how he cried and clung tightly to his mother on his first day of class in the Head Start program a quarter of a century ago.

Tamayo has come full circle from those beginnings in a central Los Angeles barrio, where Head Start launched him on a path toward college and, ultimately, dental school. Now he runs his own dental practice in Oxnard, where he treats poor neighborhood children in the Head Start program for a third of what most dentists charge.

“I decided early on, before dental school, that I wanted to serve the Latino community,” said Tamayo, 31, who began his Oxnard practice in 1987. Under contract with Head Start administrators, he and his four assistants provide service to more than 200 children from low-income families--about 35% of his patients.

“It puts me in touch with my beginnings,” he said of his Head Start patients. “A lot of providers don’t want to serve these kids because it’s not economically viable.”

Tamayo sees his own success as evidence of the value of Head Start, which prepares preschoolers for kindergarten by teaching social skills and improving their health and nutrition.

In 1960, Tamayo and his two younger siblings came from Mexico to Los Angeles with their parents. He said that the family spoke very little English at home and that Head Start was his first experience with a foreign language.

“In retrospect, I’m glad I learned that way, instead of in some bilingual program. You adapt much better when you’re forced.”

Head Start helped him build a foundation in his early school years that made it easier to stay in school. A high school counselor encouraged him to take a dental assistant course and, after he passed the one-year course, he soon decided that he wanted to go on to dental school.

He graduated from the University of the Pacific School of Dentistry in San Francisco and gained experience practicing part-time in affluent Thousand Oaks. But Tamayo said he wanted to give something back to the community.

Tamayo said he finds fulfillment in treating youngsters who would otherwise lose all their teeth. But it’s often frustrating, he said, because many of them don’t even own a toothbrush.

“Basically, it’s ignorance on the part of the parents,” Tamayo said. “Moreover, disadvantaged children tend to eat more sweets and junk food than their middle-class counterparts.”