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HALF MOON BAY — Dr. Josefina Enriquez will never have to worry about going hungry, like some of her patients.
That's not because she charges an arm and a leg — in fact, she charges many patients nothing at all. In return, they bring her what little payment they can afford: the fruits of their labor on the Coastside.
"That's how I survive. I don't have to go to the market. The only thing I buy is milk because the fishermen give me fish, and the people who work in the fields give me vegetables, and tomatoes, and lemons," said Enriquez, pulling a bag of lemons out from under her desk on a recent visit to her private practice in Half Moon Bay. "What can you do? They don't have any money, and I promised to follow the Hippocratic oath; and if somebody is ill, you have to help them."
Being flexible about payment is just one of the ways Enriquez — also known as "Dr. Joy" — has endeared herself to legions of patients and kept herself in business since 1982, making the 69-year-old grandmother the longest-serving private physician on the coast. But it doesn't explain how she has managed to serve a staggering annual case load of 5,000 patients — 85 percent of them uninsured or dependent on low-income state or county care — while maintaining her sanity, making a profit, and finding time to run a free RotaCare clinic on the side.
She has also spent the past 27 years as a staff member at Mills Peninsula Hospital
"Dr. Enriquez is not an ordinary mortal. She's an extraordinary person in this community. I don't now how she does it, is the honest truth. A typical doctor has 2,000 patients, she already had 5,000 "... and she's in her late 60s. I don't know how she does it," said Dr. Dan McMillan, former medical director of Coastside Family Medical Center.
He and two other local physicians are now opening their own private practice next month that will take on a number of uninsured patients, but nowhere near the number Dr. Enriquez treats. He says they couldn't afford it.
"She gives us advice like, 'If you want to be in private practice and see those kinds of patients, do it. It will work. Put your faith in the universal law of positive vibrations and it will work.' But I need a little more proof than that."
Proof enough is the success of the practice and the energy with which Enriquez approaches each of her patients. She sees three at a time, one in each examination room, after they have been prepped by her nursing assistant. Somewhere in there she even finds time to feed her birds — she keeps caged finches and canaries in the waiting room to lighten patients' moods — and personally plant all the trees and flowers that greet visitors outside her practice.
The fact is, this petite, chestnut-haired doctor is rarely overwhelmed by anything. A single mother of two boys, Enriquez arrived in Half Moon Bay in 1967 from the Philippines without anyone to help her and quickly found a job at St. Joseph's Hospital in San Francisco. Although she already had a medical degree from Manila, Philippines, she completed a second residency and two internships with the U.S. Public Health Service before opening her practice in Half Moon Bay.
In 1986, she became the first female member of the Half Moon Bay Rotary Club. In 2001, she was inducted into the San Mateo County Women's Hall of Fame.
Her secret is the power of positive thinking, an "old-fashioned" practice she passes on to her patients.
"Ninety-nine percent of my treatment just consists of listening and talking to the patient. I hate to give medicine to the old people unless it is necessary. I'm prone to go to other kinds of alternative medicine and working on the mind," Enriquez said. "I tell my patients, whatever you put in your mind and you truly believe you will achieve. So if you tell yourself 'I don't have the pain,' you will not have the pain."
Rather than dispense a sleeping pill, Enriquez is more likely to prescribe not watching television just before bedtime.
Next, Enriquez will turn her prodigious enthusiasm toward keeping the RotaCare clinic open every day, as opposed to one day a week. She'll recruit doctors and raise funds at a birthday party in July, throwing a "bring your check" party in July similar to the one she had on her 65th birthday, during which she raised $10,000 for the clinic.
She also wants to build a shelter for local homeless veterans and people who have been evicted from their homes, a longtime goal for many social service workers on the Coastside. Although she doesn't advertise it, Enriquez is known for giving local homeless folks enough money to stay a few nights at a local hotel until they are placed in a shelter elsewhere in San Mateo County.
Enriquez was planning to retire next year and devote herself to free service, but the influx of new patients in her private practice has made that impossible. Now, she says with a wry smile, she'll probably retire at 80.
"I'm not really working for money anymore. It's just my personal satisfaction. When you get to my age, you should be working for your immortality, and not for money," she said with a laugh.
Reach Julia Scott at 650-0348-4340 or at julia.scott@bayareanewsgroup.com.
