Nurse from Berkeley Honored for Improving Lives Around the World

From Kaiser Permanente:

When Ricardo Charles got a call last month about the David Lawrence Community Service Awards, he knew just what to say. He launched immediately into praise of a respected colleague whom he had nominated.

But then the caller said, “No, no. This is about you, Ricardo Charles.”

“I’m just a worker bee … I didn’t know I was nominated,” said Charles, a Berkeley resident who has worked for 13 years as a certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) at the Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center.

His genuinely incredulous reaction said much about his selfless view of the countless volunteer medical missions he’s embarked on and organized for the past 20 years in Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iraq, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela, as well as the volunteer work he’s done in Oakland.

Kaiser Permanente named Charles a 2012 David Lawrence Community Service Award winner for his extraordinary efforts to improve the health of underserved communities. He is one of 14 Kaiser Permanente individuals and groups throughout the country selected to receive the award, and one of four individuals recognized in the Northern California Region.

The awards are presented by the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan/Hospitals Board of Directors and are named after David M. Lawrence, former chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente.

‘The Joy Is All in the Service’

Charles is being honored for his work with Operation Rainbow, a nonprofit that provides orthopedic surgery to Latin American children, and his work with Hospital de La Familia in northern Guatemala, where he’ll return on Feb. 22 to help with ear, nose, and throat care, cataract surgery, and obstetrics.

The award also recognizes his volunteer work in Oakland with Operation Access, a nonprofit that provides free surgery to the poor and uninsured.

He has lost track of the number of missions he’s done over the years. He did five last year, traveling twice to Iraq to help with a liver transplant in Kurdistan and three times to Guatemala and Ecuador.

“The reward is the service,” said Charles, who is fluent in Spanish, having grown up in Chile. “The joy is all in the service.”

Improving the Lives of Thousands

Nicholas A. Riegels, MD, an anesthesiologist at Oakland Medical Center who nominated Charles, is effusive with his praise.

“Ricardo Charles’ patient service population is the world,” Dr. Riegels wrote. “When Ricardo is not in the midst of a medical mission trip himself, he is helping someone else find supplies, equipment, or staff to organize their own trip. Simply put, Ricardo has directly improved the lives of thousands of people here at home and all over the world.”

Working first as a technician in the anesthesia department at University of California, San Francisco, Charles studied to become a registered nurse while working full time. His technical skills—fixing a malfunctioning autoclave or a cranky anesthetic machine in those early days—have proved invaluable today in his medical missions abroad. Beyond his technical and clinical skills, Charles is also a leader who regularly organizes medical missions for 20 to 30 volunteers.

And yet Charles described himself, humbly, as “just a worker bee.”

“You can get bogged down in the details of life,” he said. “But when you go and watch a surgeon perform a corrective orthopedic operation, or a cleft palate surgery, you’re seeing someone help change the life of another person forever.”

For Charles, that is the reward of service.