FOR A GOOD CAUSE:

As a Newport Beach dentist, Kate Sahafi treats plenty of patients who can afford her services.

She also treats many who can’t, such as orphans in Mexico and former drug addicts.

“Everybody likes to smile, and imagine if you can’t do that,” she said.

Sahafi donates her services when she can to patients in need.

She’s treated kids at drug rehabilitation centers who have “meth mouth,” a condition in which the tooth enamel has been eroded by longterm usage.

Once they’ve quit, they want to take care of themselves, Sahafi said.

Sahafi has been obsessed with teeth since the age of 5.

“I always loved white, beautiful teeth,” she said, and told anyone who asked that she wanted to be a dentist when she grew up.

When she was 8, a dentist pulled her baby tooth — a tooth more deeply rooted than he thought —without using any anesthetic.

While that painful experience caused her to rethink her career choice, in the end it just made her more determined to be a dentist who advocated for patients.

Sahafi grew up in Iran and left there to live in France with her mother after the revolution in the late 1970s.

She attended dental school there, moving to the U.S. in 1996, where she attended UCLA, married, had a daughter and settled in Laguna Hills.

Sahafi drove to Newport Beach in 2005 to make an offer on a dental practice that was for sale.

“I came here, I passed that bridge and saw all the boats, and thought this is too good to be true. I’ll never get this practice.”

She got the practice. Today, Dover Dental treats about 850 patients.

Because the practice had been open since 1968, many of the patients she inherited were elderly.

In a small practice like hers, Sahafi said, she has time to talk to patients.

When she tried to make follow-up appointments, patients said they had to call back because they were dependent on others for transportation.

“After talking to patients, I thought maybe I could offer to have someone pick them up and bring them back.”

That “someone” is often a cab driver whom Sahafi calls and pays.

“It doesn’t cost much, about $30, and it’s a way for them to be independent,” she said.

Sahafi is also on staff at nearby Newport Bay Hospital, and often walks there to treat the geriatric patients needing emergency services.

She is part of a mentoring program at Newport Harbor High School.

Junior and senior students interested in dentistry meet with Sahafi, visit her office, and observe her work.

“You will spend eight years of your life in school,” Sahafi tells students, “so you really need to know for sure whether this is what you want to do.”

She said some kids come once and see that it’s not something they want to do, and rather than having an idealized vision of what being a dentist entails, they are able to “see it for real” and make an informed decision.

Sahafi travels to Ensenada twice a year with the Rotary Club to treat orphans and special-needs students.

People wait for hours to be treated, Sahafi said, but with limited time to see so many patients, emergency cases are taken first.

“I wish we could have an office there, with chairs, but we don’t, and the kids are so good. They hug you and kiss you — they’re so happy that someone is taking care of their teeth.”

“I think that every dentist needs to give up some of their time. It’s a small thing to give back,” Sahafi said.

The office staff calls her “Dr. Kate,” and Sahafi said she’ll treat anyone she sees who she thinks needs dental care.

“I remember one time I had a patient who went to jail. He just made a mistake; he was a really nice guy. He was drunk, ran away from the cop, got punched, and he broke his teeth.”

Sahafi said he was trying to start over after spending about eight months in jail. He was also depressed, and he didn’t know how he would get a job with no teeth.

She told him she would treat him, but under one condition.

“I said, I’m not doing it for free. I’ll do it, and then whenever you find a job and you get paid, you come and pay me back at that time,” she said.

“It makes you feel good. It’s not about the money.”

SUE THOENSEN may be reached at (714) 966-4627 or at [email protected].