2019 Threads of Hope Award Winners

Article by Peter Crooks of Diablo Magazine:

Every year, Diablo asks readers to tell us about unsung heroes in the East Bay—individuals who are changing our region for the better through their volunteer work. This year’s Threads of Hope honorees include an octogenarian doctor who treats patients for free, a photographer who captures families’ precious moments, a nonprofit founder driven to help Tri-Valley teens, a tireless proponent of foster care youth, and a woman dedicated to making seniors’ dreams come true.

Tom Wallace

Tom Wallace

Order of Malta Clinic of Northern California
Oakland

At age 89, Dr. Tom Wallace shouldn’t be expected to work full-time. After all, he already spent nearly half a century as a practicing neurologist—much of that time in Livermore and Pleasanton—before retiring to care for his late wife, Coni, in 2001. After Coni passed away in 2012, Wallace was attending Mass one day, and a fellow worshipper told him about the Order of Malta free medical clinic across from Oakland’s Lake Merritt. “He suggested I volunteer there,” Wallace says. “A priest behind us overheard our talk. He told me, ‘You should do that.’ I thought, Perhaps I should.”

For five years, Wallace has been working four days per week at the clinic, which treats patients without health coverage for free. Its name references one of Catholicism’s oldest orders. “The mission has always been to help the sick and the poor,” Wallace says. “It’s no different today than it was in ancient Jerusalem.”

Soft-spoken and congenial, Wallace has treated more than a thousand patients since 2014. “There is a real sense of love,” he says of the relationship between the clinic’s staff and patients.

Justin Close, an Oakland-based chef in his late 40s, was in need of medical services last year after spending a few days with a high fever. Having let his health insurance lapse due to financial constraints, he went to the clinic for help. “I had double-lung pneumonia, which meant I had no oxygen going to my blood,” Close says. “My heart was beating so fast, I almost had a heart attack. I blacked out before the end of the appointment.”

Wallace treated Close and had the patient rushed to Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, where he was put in an induced coma for one week and given a lifesaving combination of medication and treatments. When he came out of his coma, Close was confused and had lost 30 pounds.

“I was in a situation where I was shocked, but Dr. Wallace’s manner was very soothing,” Close recalls. “He told me, ‘Just take it one day at a time and listen to your body, and you’re going to live a long time.’”

Close is grateful for the care he received. “If anyone should be nominated for sainthood,” he adds, “it’s Dr. Wallace.”

How to help: “We always need volunteers—nurses, doctors, and those who can help with filing systems and things that need to be controlled carefully,” Wallace says. “We could really use a social worker to come in a few hours per week to assist patients after they leave, especially helping them to get health insurance.”