Congratulations to Karen Murillo Casaca for 15 Years of Service

Kudos to one of the clinic’s longest tenured employees—Karen Murillo Casaca—for 15 years of faithful service. She is not looking for diamonds or a pot of gold, but simply seeking the gratification for trying to help people.

This simple quote from Dr Zeuss typifies the route she has taken:

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the one who'll decide where you'll go.

Upon completing her schooling as a teenager, Karen joined the Manos Amigas staff in 2005 as the receptionist in the cluttered confines of our temporary clinic in downtown La Entrada. From our very earliest of days, she was responsible for interacting with patients, computerizing records and handling logistical supplies. She was adept at crowd control and the patients soon learned that she was the key to accessing services needed from the single doctor on staff.

Karen grew up in a small rural village. When she moved to La Entrada, she took advantage of the opportunities that presented themselves. English courses were taught at the clinic and Karen quickly became bi-lingual. Soon she was translating for medical brigades that visited the clinic, all the while maintaining strict crowd control of hundreds of patients and making medical referrals and contacts as necessary. She assisted with the visiting audiologists and the Starkey team, quickly learning how to make ear molds for fitting hearing aids.

Seeing the response from patients for her assistance, she knew she wanted to do more to aid them and was thinking about enrolling in nursing school. Interacting with patients and a visiting Honduran vision care team at our new clinic in 2010, she had her first glimpse of what was medically possible through observing procedures for the visually impaired.

When Serving at the Crossroads decided to add vision acuity testing and host small surgical cataract teams at the clinic, we offered Karen a scholarship to spend two years studying to become an ophthalmology technical assistant. Karen graduated at the top of her class and returned to the clinic to set up a vision care department.

She performs eye exams and has become an integral part of the technical support team for visiting surgical eye teams. Karen does the preparatory patient screening and assists in the OR with thousands of patients, including traveling with ophthalmology brigades to several other Latin American countries. Visiting physicians have all been exceedingly pleased with her attention to detail and follow through on cases, commenting favorably on her abilities.

Recognizing there is no eye care in the community beyond what the clinic offers and that she is not trained as a physician, Karen wanted to be able to do even more. So, with the aid of another scholarship from Serving at the Crossroads, she has enrolled in a four-year program to become an optometrist. She is working at the clinic, doubling up on her course work, and traveling to Guatemala for week-end practicums once a month because there are limited opportunities for such educational studies in Honduras.

We commend Karen for her initiative and 15 years of dedicated service to others. I will complete this story with the final line from Dr. Seuss: oh, the places you’ll go.

We are fortunate to have Karen at the Manos Amigas Clinic and are looking forward to seeing the places she will go.