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Bill Heberton, VIM board member, passes away at 87

Volunteers in Medicine Clinic is mourning the passing of board member, Bill Heberton, who passed away June 6 at the age of 87. A member of the finance committee, he joined the board of directors in 2013. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Helen, as well as five children.

Bill began with the clinic as a volunteer about nine years ago before transitioning to the board of directors. His first volunteer job was as a greeter. He then became an appointment reminder caller, prior to helping out in the development office.

Our executive director, Dr. Raymond L. Cox spoke highly of Bill and his contributions to our clinic. “Bill was a kind, insightful and patient person. His commitment to Volunteers in Medicine was unwavering.”

Cox added that “Bill’s intellect, humility and quick wit will be sorely missed. He will remain a valued link in our Circle of Caring.”

His passions included golf, including memberships at Hilton Head National and Dolphin Head, where he was a board president for two years. He was active with the Special Olympics of Georgia. Bill introduced golf to that organization through active work with the Atlanta Chapter and helped organize outings and tournaments. In addition to working with the clinic, he volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, helping build a house for First Presbyterian Church.

A native of Philadelphia, he was a successful businessman including owning the Jim Dandy Co. and consulting in the pet food industry before retiring to Hilton Head. He graduated from Lafayette College in 1952 and received an MBA from Drexel.

Volunteers in Medicine Hilton Head Island Announces Partnership with the Wexford Plantation Charitable Foundation to Launch Major Campaign Against Breast Cancer

Hilton Head Island, SC, April 10, 2018–Volunteers in Medicine Hilton Head Island is pleased to announce that it has partnered with the Wexford Plantation Charitable Foundation in its ongoing campaign against breast cancer.  The foundation has awarded the clinic a generous $20,000 donation for mammograms.

The Mammography Program at VIM is an integral component within the clinic and truly serves as the cornerstone of the Women’s Health Program.  VIM provides close to 800 potentially life-saving screening and diagnostic mammograms annually to our neighbors in need.  Recent losses of funding from other sources traditionally directed toward mammography jeopardized the program’s continued success.  The Wexford Foundation’s gift ensures that the Mammography Program continues to thrive and that all patients for whom a screening is recommended have access to such.

“The Wexford Foundation’s partnership with VIM enables us to continue to make a major impact on the early detection and elimination of breast cancer in our community through provision of screenings to the medically underserved population.  We are delighted with their choice to support the program in such a meaningful way and look forward to a continued and strong partnership with the Wexford Foundation,” says Ginger Allen, VIM’s Director of Development.

(Left to right) foundation member Sue MacCormack, VIM development director Ginger Allen, foundation member Terry Baehr, VIM board chairman Jim Collett and VIM executive director Dr. Raymond Cox commemorate the donation outside the clinic.

About Volunteers in Medicine Hilton Head Island
Celebrating its 25^th anniversary, Volunteers in Medicine was established on Hilton Head Island in 1993 and now provides free medical, dental, mental health, vision and prescription drug care for those residents of the community who live and or work on Hilton Head or Daufuskie Islands, earn less than 200% of federal poverty levels and are underinsured or uninsured. Last year, VIM provided care across close to 30,000 patient visits and serves as the model for 96 free health clinics throughout the country. Funding is through grants and donations. VIM neither seeks nor accepts government support.

Close to 700 volunteer physicians, nurses, dentists, chiropractors, social workers and lay persons manage 23 medical specialties and five disease management clinics for those patients with chronic disease such as diabetes and hypertension.

Volunteers in Medicine Hilton Head Island is located at 15 Northridge Drive. For information call 843.689.6612 or visit www.vimclinic.org.

About the Wexford Plantation Charitable Foundation

The Wexford Plantation Charitable Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to providing financial and volunteer resources to local non-profit organizations which provide social services for humanitarian needs.  Launched in 2012 with the support of the Wexford Plantation community, the Foundation has granted over $750,000 to local organizations and made a difference for hundreds of adults, children and families in need on Hilton Head Island and the surrounding communities.

At a glance, Hilton Head Island seems like an idyllic vacationer’s paradise, as a coveted retirement destination. Unfortunately, there is a side that many observers don’t see or don’t want to see. Driving through the gated communities it’s difficult to conceive of human trafficking as being an issue, but it is a very real one.

Dealing with a medically underserved and less economically stable demographic, the staff and volunteers at our clinic have seen and heard about this issue first hand. In fact, one of our volunteers, Katy Coyle, was instrumental in preventing a local young woman from being caught up in a trafficking ring. And she learned about the resources available through her work at the Volunteers in Medicine Hilton Head Island Clinic.

Julie Copp, the clinic’s director of nursing, said she was approached about eight years ago by a local advocacy group about coming to the clinic to talk about human trafficking and its local impact. She realized quickly she didn’t know the breadth of the issue.

“They came in and talked to us and showed a video,” she said. “It was from a place 20 miles from where I [lived] in Ohio in Amish country. I had no idea.”

The group, which has since disbanded, came back on other occasions to share new information and strategies with the VIM HHI nurses and staff. Coyle, a nurse volunteer from Michigan, was equally unaware of the problem locally. Thankfully, she learned because it may just have saved a young woman’s life.

Katy and her husband befriended Belinda, (not her real name) a server at a restaurant they frequented. Belinda, who relocated to the Lowcountry, was young, impressionable and easily susceptible to the kind of people that prey on these young people for profit.

“She was very naïve,” Coyle said. “She was from a small, rural area. She was home-schooled. It was a very strict religious family. She was sheltered and not very worldly.”

Because of her upbringing, Belinda developed a bit of wanderlust. And that desire to see the world caused her to almost get swept up in a catastrophic situation.

“These human traffickers prey on young people on social media and other internet sites,” Coyle said. “Belinda saw a Facebook ad looking for traveling companions. The ad said that these companions would accompany people while they traveled — to help them. It seemed like a great opportunity to her. The ad said that the companions would be able to travel to Florida. That’s one of the places she’d always been interested in going to, so she got involved in it.”

Coyle said Belinda was recruited and made arrangements to join up and travel to Florida. Unfortunately, things went sideways pretty quickly for the young woman. Coyle did not hear from Belinda after she left until she received a cryptic text message. The message said that she wasn’t doing well and that things were not headed in the right direction.

“She said, ‘Someday I’ll have to tell you more about these people. They aren’t who they said they were,’” Coyle said. Take your pick– red flags, warning bells, ominous feelings – Coyle said the text triggered all of them.

What happened next was something out of a movie. Instead of going to Florida, Belinda had been taken by the people to a campground somewhere in Tennessee. Coyle knew something was wrong, and thanks to her training at VIM HHI, knew the best way to help would be to keep lines of communication open until they could get assistance to arrive.

In a succession of text messages, Belinda revealed that the people she was with were more like captors than employers. They kept her under close watch and didn’t let her go off on her own. They forced her to panhandle for money to pay for their travel expenses. Belinda told Coyle that one of the men showed her a knife at one point and said that he had been forced to use it before. Belinda had purchased three bus tickets to Florida for herself and the couple she was with. Their tickets were round-trip while Belinda’s was one-way. She was now scared and Coyle and her husband jumped into action.

Coyle called the National Human Trafficking Hotline and a representative helped her through the process of getting Belinda home safely.

“The people from the hotline were helping me,” she said. “They told me to keep her on the line. To interject nonsense texts and pictures in case the captors took the phone so it wouldn’t appear like Belinda was trying to evade them.”

Contact was made with one of Belinda’s relatives who was within driving distance. Once that person was on the road, the most important thing was trying to find a way for Belinda to escape the camp undetected. It wasn’t easy because she was under constant scrutiny. She went to the rest room to send and receive messages. She was grateful that there was cellular reception that allowed for communication with Coyle.

The Coyles and the hotline officials were able to narrow down her exact location through phone triangulation. Eventually, as her relative was in the area, the opportunity to escape the camp presented itself. They let Belinda know where her relative was and she made a break for it.

What happened next was silence. No communication for several minutes. The wait was agonizing as Coyle held out hope that things were going well. After what seemed like an interminable wait, she finally received word.

“The text was from her relative,” Coyle said. “It said, ‘I have her. She’s safe.’”

The sense of relief was palpable. Everybody took a deep breath. Belinda was safe and on her way to safety. She’s back locally now, staying with a couple from the same area of the country she moved here from. They also have a story of escaping from difficult circumstances. It’s a great fit for everybody involved as Belinda tries to recover from the trauma she suffered.

If you suspect that human trafficking is going on you can contact the national hotline at (888)373-7888 or by texting 233733. The organization’s website is humantraffickinghotline.org and has great information including statistics on human trafficking that will shock and surprise you.

When Buck Edwards retired after a long career at IBM, over two decades ago, he and his wife, Karen, elected to move to Hilton Head because there isn’t an IBM corporate office in the vicinity. Buck said he was trying his best to distance himself from other IBM people. It didn’t work.

“Thinking that was a big mistake,” he chuckled. Another error in judgement was thinking that he would be fulfilled in his retirement playing golf every day. He said the routine got tired pretty quickly,

“I knew it wasn’t going to be sustainable,” Buck noted. “I knew I needed to find something to do. That wound up being volunteer work.”

Interestingly enough, that did not lead him to the Volunteers in Medicine Clinic on Hilton Head Island. At least not directly. Buck said he answered an ad for a volunteer opportunity that was published in the Island Packet. He didn’t realize it at the time, but he was getting in on the ground floor of what would be the enormously successful IMPACT Mentoring program.

The program connects volunteers and at-risk children in local schools in an attempt to steer them in the right direction. At the early meetings, he learned that this was a dire and pressing community need.

“At the time, 50 percent of the students that were enrolling in high school here weren’t graduating in four years,” he exclaimed. “I asked myself, ‘How is this possible?’”

Taking a look around the Island, he wound up seeing and noticing the hidden poverty and the working poor who were the staff and backbone of many of the resort and hospitality businesses.

“The people who work at the restaurants and hotels and clean your pools have children,” he said. “Those kids are going to school with the kids from the gated communities:

He saw the root problem. It was the same root problem observed by VIM”s late founder, Dr. Jack B. McConnell, which spurred him to build the clinic on Hilton Head Island that now stands as the model for nearly 90 clinics nationally.

Buck began mentoring at-risk youth, and helped many children over the years. He would talk to the children, and most importantly, listen to what they had to say.

“I would tell mentors to use the back of their chairs because you’re going to hear things that are going to blow you away,” he said.

Over time, when he would hear about children or their family members who were underserved and experiencing health problems, he would suggest they visit the VIM Clinic for treatment.

It happened specifically with a young man named, Arthur who was mentored by Buck. And here is where the story dovetails with Volunteers in Medicine nicely. Buck told Arthur about VIM and Arthur told his mother about the clinic and she went—and got better. The episode had a lingering impact on both Arthur and Buck.

“One of the exercises we did with the mentorees was to write down plans and goals for the future,” Buck said. “They could change at any time. I had Arthur do that and asked him what he wrote. He told me, ‘Mr. Buck, I want to be a volunteer, but not with the mentoring program. I want to be a volunteer at Volunteers in Medicine!’”

According to Buck, the doctors and volunteers at the clinic treated Arthur and his mother with courtesy, kindness and respect, “They didn’t make them feel badly or feel judged for needing to seek care at the free clinic.”

Hopefully this story will have a happy ending but the outcome is far from certain because Buck and Arthur are no longer in contact. One winter break, Buck went to visit family in Connecticut for the holidays. He came back and attempted to meet with Arthur, but learned to his dismay that the boy had moved out of state to live with relatives because his mother had passed away suddenly.

Buck said it was not surprising in retrospect because something he had suspected to be true was, in fact, the reality of the situation.

“The woman he called his mother was actually his grandmother,” he said. “I suspected it when he told me that his mother was my age. His mother gave birth to him when she was 14 years old. His grandmother saw that she was not going to be able to raise the baby, and raised Arthur herself. After she passed, Arthur went to Florida to live with who he thought was his sister, but was actually his mother.”

Buck said he tried in vain to get permission to contact Arthur, but was denied access by the family in Florida. Still, he hopes that the positive changes Arthur had experienced will carry forward and someday, as a grown man, Arthur will walk into the door of our clinic to volunteer and share the story of the mentor who pointed him in the clinic’s direction.

You can donate directly to the clinic by clicking here. Click here to be directed to information about volunteering at the clinic.

The Volunteers in Medicine Hilton Head Island Clinic Celebrated its annual Volunteer Appreciation Luncheon on Monday, March 5 at St. Andrew’s By-the-Sea United Methodist Church on Hilton Head Island, At the luncheon we recognized our milestone volunteers.