“(With) every patient who comes in, I have a puzzle that I get to put together, and I use my science background and my experience to do that. As cool as that is, after I figure out how to fix it, I get to show off what I really (love), which is being an artist. All day long, I do little tiny sculptures that, frankly, can rival some of the great statues of the Renaissance. At least one time this week, somebody's going to cry in this office because I did something they never thought I could do for them.” 

— Dr. Chris Dorow, Othello Dental Arts

OTHELLO — It’s been said that some people are born to greatness, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them. And then some do great things on a small scale.

“For whatever reason, I always seem to gravitate into leadership,” said Dr. Chris Dorow, owner of Othello Dental Arts and president of the Washington State Dental Association. “When I graduated from dental school in 1995, I was the student body president for the dental school. I went immediately from there into volunteering for the Washington State Dental Association. My first committee was the Communications Committee, and then they moved me to Membership Services … I was there for 16 years, and I (was asked) to be on the board of directors an insane amount of times.”

When he was elected last year for a one-year term, he was the first president ever unanimously elected, he said. As president, he’s worked hard to change the culture of the WSDA, which represents about 4,000 dentists in the state, but has trouble with leadership that was unable to work together.

“The culture was out of whack,” he said. “It was personal. Most people on the board of directors at that time had served one term. You could serve two, but nobody served two. They didn’t relate well to each other.”

Dorow and a few other board members set out to change that, he said, making it more health care-centric and less about the organization itself.

“We’ve reversed the tendency of young dentists not joining the association,” he said. “We made it so right now, they’re joining in droves. We’re having our biggest increase that we’ve had in 10 years in membership.”

Pursuing the art

Dorow is a second-generation dentist, having taken over the practice his father founded in 1971, he said. He hadn’t originally planned to be a dentist; instead, he took a full-ride music scholarship to Central Washington University. However, he soon found that success in music came as much from luck as from ability. He also considered becoming a TV weatherman. But having dyslexia had gotten him in the habit of working hard to learn, he said, and he wanted something to show for it.

“When you go to school … you want to invest your time and get a return on that investment,” he said. “If you’re not doing it that way, you’re going to fail, and fail miserably … I was a pretty good student, so I was getting a lot of A’s. But what fit, what made the most sense? Where was the best application to get a return on that investment, and something that I hopefully will enjoy for the rest of my life? And it came down to medical school and dental school.”

He didn’t even tell his parents he was considering dental school until he was accepted at the University of Washington, he said.

Besides being a good return on his investment, dentistry is both an art and a science, and a way of giving back to the community.

“(With) every patient who comes in, I have a puzzle that I get to put together, and I use my science background and my experience to do that,” he said. “And then, as cool as that is, after I figure out how to fix it, I get to show off what I really (love), which is being an artist. All day long, I do little tiny sculptures that, frankly, can rival some of the great statues of the Renaissance. At least one time this week, somebody’s going to cry in this office because I did something they never thought I could do for them.”

Being one of the very few dentists in a rural area means treating a wide variety of people, some of whom have no other opportunity for dental care, Dorow said.

“The coolest thing about being a health care provider is you get to see everybody, especially in a small community like this,” he said. “I don’t have a niche office. I treat everybody and when it rains, the orchards get shut down, and you better open up the schedule so that people who can only get in here a couple of times a year can get in here and get taken care of. Man, you want to talk about an appreciative group? There’s a reason why I do that, because I love those people. They’re the best.”

Giving back

While he was at Central, Chris Dorow had an encounter even more life-changing than dentistry.

“We met in freshman year,” said Genna Dorow. “We were in the same dorm, and we started dating about halfway through the year.”

The Dorows were married after Chris’ graduation from UW and recently celebrated their 30th anniversary. They have two grown children, both of whom are planning to attend dental school, they said.

However, Chris Dorow said, the field is changing.

“The viability of dental practices has really dropped, especially in rural communities,” he said. “When I came (back) to Othello 30 years ago, there were eight private dental clinics within a 12-mile radius. We had four in Othello, we had one in Royal City, two in Connell and one in Warden. Today, in a nearly 20-mile radius, I’m the last one and that is common.”

The problem isn’t so much the dwindling population of small towns as the logistics of running a dental practice and the difficulty of getting dentists and trained staff to settle in a rural area, Dorow said.

“I’m on year five of looking for an associate to come in and help me, and I’ve decided it’s just not going to happen,” he said. “Same thing with a hygienist unless they’re from here. With the dentists, even if you home-grow them, it’s still not for sure that they’ll come back here if they don’t marry (someone) from the same area.”

The Dorows give back to the community in other ways, they said. Genna serves on the city council, and Chris is chairman of the city planning commission. Chris participated in a program for at-risk youth for about 20 years, he said.

“All those kids had one trait in common,” he said. “They didn’t have a lot of hope, but they were really hard workers, and they could get things going. I would hire them to do jobs, and I’d watch them and be in awe of the effort and work they did … It turned out that 80% of my kids in that program ended up being the first generation to ever go to college or go into some sort of extra training or some sort of school, and God, have they knocked it out of the park.”

There’s a reason he returned to his hometown to practice, Dorow said.

“A lot of dentists are like, ‘Why the heck are you in Othello? You could be (somewhere else) and be a lot more successful,’” he said. “Well, I’m happy, and I’m more than successful with what I’m doing. I came to be a dentist, but I stayed for the people.”