Eye doctor's vow: No vision left behind
While serving two tours with the U.S. Navy in Việt Nam, Tim Mendez saw enough devastation to last a lifetime.
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 While serving two tours with the U.S. Navy in Vi?t Nam, Tim Mendez saw enough devastation to last a lifetime. “War is ugly. Because I was in the military, I had to go,” he said. “But I told myself that if I survived, I would do something for humanity.” Since then, the eye surgeon founded an ocular technical school for the Navy, served as a senior medical adviser for the military and worked 20 years for the University of California at San Diego’s Shiley Eye Center. Moreover, he has done corrective eye surgery pro bono in the Ukraine, Philippines, Mexico, Vi?t Nam and Guatemala, collaborated on the design of state-of-the-art instruments used in eye surgery and contributed several papers advancing the treatment of eye surgery and eye diseases, including a study aimed at preventing blindness resulting from the AIDS virus. In 2002, he was invited to do volunteer surgery in Nepal. He routinely does volunteer work in Tijuana, sometimes performing as many as 30 surgeries a day. You might say that Mendez lives up to his word. In his eyes, the past has been just a beginning. In January, he’ll conduct a major humanitarian mission to his native Philippines and upon his return plans to create a foundation to replicate his work in poor communities worldwide. “People simply have to learn what Tim has,” said Art Domingo, longtime leader in the San Diego Filipino American community and Mendez’s most ardent backer. Domingo, founder and current vice president of the Filipino American Development Initiative, chief of staff of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations and a director of the San Diego Executive Lions Club, will accompany Mendez on his January mission, along with three doctors and eight other members of the Lions, whose membership tackles problems like blindness and diabetes. Mendez, now 64, grew up in a poor fishing community in Cebu, an island in the Philippines facing the China Sea and routinely devastated by typhoons. To survive, his family raised pigs and would routinely slaughter one, cook it and preserve it to survive typhoon season. “I think back, and that’s why I have to do this. That’s why I have to help these people,” said Mendez. Helping people has been a way of life for Mendez, who entered the Navy in 1964 and served in submarines. After two tours in Vi?t Nam, he returned to the United States, where he was assigned to San Diego’s Balboa Naval Hospital. As an instructor there, he established an ophthalmology school dedicated to advanced eye surgery. “There was no school for the technicians and the nurses to learn the job of supporting optometrists,” the doctors who diagnose and treat eye problems, said Mendez, who as an ophthalmologist is trained in corrective eye surgery. “I was lucky. The Navy told me: ‘OK, this is your specialty.’ They gave me the school, so I had to start a curriculum.” Ten years ago, he decided to turn his vacations into humanitarian missions, not only to perform surgeries, but to train ophthalmology nurses and technicians in the poorest communities of several countries. On one of those trips, he met a Vietnamese eye specialist returning to his native country for the first time for similar work. He invited Mendez to join him. When Mendez arrived at the airport in Sài Gòn, “I had a mixture of feeling. I saw the tower. I was sweating. That’s where we used to land” when stationed in Vi?t Nam, he recalled. It did not deter him from doing 175 surgeries in three days. It’s that kind of performance that has become routine for Mendez, who has tackled cataracts, eye socket and eyelid problems, retina damage from diseases such as diabetes and rare tear duct surgery. He also wrote for several journals on unique eye problems such as preventing liquid accumulation during surgery. Realigning eye muscles to correct conditions such as crossed eyes, lazy eyes or squinting, however, remains his specialty. Not using the eyes properly, says Mendez, is like abandoning a trail. An unused trail becomes overgrown with grass and is no longer usable. It’s the same with eyes. Without full and unfettered use, blindness can result. When Domingo met Mendez earlier this year and learned of his specialty, he told him: “We need you.” While missions to different countries are important, Domingo thought, what if those missions can be used to train local doctors to follow in Mendez’s footsteps? “When you go to a country, you don’t just do surgery,” said Domingo. The goal “is to work with local doctors so they can fix their own.” That, in essence, is the goal of Mendez’s proposed foundation. “When I go to different countries, I want them to have the same treatment and supplies as we get in this country,” Mendez said. “No second-hand or third-hand knowledge.”
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