It was Robert Heath, DCMS executive officer at the time, who indirectly helped Barbara Stark Baxter, MD, find her 15-year volunteer job at the Agape Clinic in East Dallas. It was 1983. She had just finished her internal medicine residency and was about to begin her allergy training. She had free time and a deeply rooted belief in giving back to the community, an ethic learned while watching her mother volunteer throughout her childhood in Long Island. With her four years at Columbia medical school and four years of internal medicine training at Parkland Hospital, Dr Baxter thought she could find a productive use for her education and training.

So Dr Baxter called Mr Heath and asked about physician volunteer opportunities in Dallas. "He said, 'No one has ever asked me this before,'" Dr Baxter says. "Then he sent me to check out the federal clinics."

Which she did, starting with Los Barrios, a clinic near Parkland Hospital. Unfortunately, administrators at the clinic feared that having a volunteer physician would skew their budget and cause them to lose federal funding. So instead, they put her on its board of directors. That's where she heard about the Agape Clinic.

"A woman made a presentation for a clinic she wanted to start in East Dallas," Dr Baxter says. And therein was her volunteer opportunity.

Soon she was shown a 12-foot by 13-foot closet in the basement of Grace United Methodist Church with light bulbs hanging from wires in the ceiling. This was her clinic.

"I was fresh from residency, so I bought a few things used at Parkland, like Quinidine," Dr Baxter says. "I basically ordered everything to use in a family practice outpatient clinic."

Word spread. Vaccines came in from the Dallas County Health Department, and soon Dr Baxter and her small staff were administering immunizations. She recalls giving 70 vaccinations one busy Saturday morning. Usually, 20 to 30 patients are treated at the clinic each Saturday but Dr Baxter remembers exhausting days when she saw 50 to 60. Now, she says, the needy have many more resources than were available when the Agape Clinic was formed. But it still hums along, on Saturday mornings from 9 AM to 1 PM, serving the working poor.

Dr Baxter continues to work at the clinic on average two Saturdays a month. Even the arrival of her three children from 1986 to 1991 didn't keep her away.

"The biggest sacrifice came from my husband, David, who gave up his Saturday golf game on those weekends," Dr Baxter says. "Someone had to stay home and watch the kids." Physicians, as well as nurses, interpreters, and receptionists are needed to staff the Agape Clinic, 4105 Junius St. Interested volunteers should call Connie Webster, DCMS director of community service, at 214-948-3622 or connie@dallas-cms.org.