CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- A dentist in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood is spending Valentine’s Day providing free dental services, as he’s done for more than a dozen years.
In the packed waiting room at Big Smile Dental on the 2800 block of North Milwaukee, a woman named Jabrae was just out of the dentist’s chair.
“Probably really can’t talk, because I got my tooth extracted, which was really good, because it was giving me pain," she said.
She said she had been taking over-the-counter pain-killers for about a month.
This is the 14th Valentine’s Day that Dr. Theodore Siegel, and a small army of volunteers, have done this.
Siegel said it does more for him than the patients. He said it’s just a way of giving back and making a difference.
"We all do things we can do, but writing a check just seems so unsatisfying and to be able to actually work on the patients directly and without middle people and take care of them and make their lives better is so much more satisfying," he said.
He said it’s a feel good thing, with a lot of genuine hugs from grateful patients, many of whom would not be getting dental work done because of the cost and their lack of insurance.
Siegel was backed by what he called, "an army of volunteers."
A patient named Jonathan said, “I think it’s great, I think it’s awesome.”
He said he would have saved his money and probably would have waited a long time to see a dentist if he had not heard about this opportunity. Instead, he showed up at 5 a.m. Thursday morning.
The first of the 55 or 60 patients started the line outside the dentist’s office at about 2 a.m., seven hours before it opened.
Siegel said over the years, his office has given out more than $2 million in dental care to more than 5,500 people.