The birth of Operation Smile New York.
When I turned 30 years old, I was very blessed. I owned a fast-growing, high tech ad agency in New York City, a penthouse apartment in Manhattan and a summer house in the Hamptons. I drove a Porsche, wore designer suits and had a shiny gold Rolex. I had it all – or so I thought.
There was something missing in my life and I didn’t know what it was. One day I read about a new volunteer center Mayor Koch opened to match volunteers with various charities and public service opportunities. I immediately made an appointment and soon found myself sitting with a sweet old lady who was reviewing my resume. I told her I wanted to help coach football or basketball teams in Harlem where 90% of the boys didn’t have fathers. I couldn’t believe it when she cringed and asked me, “You’re sure you want to work in Harlem? You went to Harvard for God’s sake, I have a much better match for you – I have Japanese businessmen that need to learn English.” I was so mad, I got up and walked out.
A few days later I was on the subway headed up Park Avenue to meet with a couple plastic surgeons that I was doing freelance advertising for. They were in their 40s and making millions of dollars a year from the TV commercials and print ads my partner and I created for them. Our ads were generating 500 phone calls a week that requested the free information booklet “Everything You Need To Know About Plastic Surgery.” I wrote that booklet – I was learning a lot about plastic and reconstructive surgery.
It seemed like I was always riding the subway when the schools let out and the cars filled with inner city students going home. Without fail, every time this happened, I would see kids with giant scars on their faces, holes on the sides of their heads where their ears should have been, large port wine stains, terrible burn scars, tumors, keloids, you name it. These kids were headed home to some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country and I was headed to one of the richest plastic surgery offices on Park Avenue.
When I saw those kids on the subway, I knew that their problems could be easily fixed. The only reason they hadn’t been fixed already was because these kids were poor. What a shame I thought, that these kids would never receive the surgery that could really help them. Then one day, while riding the subway and thinking about this problem, I had an idea. What if I started a charity that would provide free plastic surgery for inner city kids who needed it but couldn’t afford it? After my disastrous interview at the volunteer center, I decided that if I couldn’t find a good charity to work for, I would just have to create one. A few months laters, my business partner Mike Schell started a surgical charity in New York City called Operation Smile. Our mission was to find inner-city kids who needed plastic surgery and match them up with a hospital that would help them without charge.
I wrote to the Joseph Fernandez, Chancellor of all the New York City public schools and told him about our charity. I told him we needed his help in finding kids who needed surgery. He loved the idea and agreed the schools would be the perfect place to find students who needed help. Our plan was for a school nurse, a guidance counselor or anybody who was designated as the point person for our program, would identify students looked like they needed some type of surgery. The point person would discreetly meet with the student and his or her parents and tell them about the opportunity for free surgery. if they were interested, they would fill out a short application and take a few photos and send it all to us.
I wrote to and met with the chiefs of plastic surgery at every major New York City hospital and asked for their help. Amazingly, they all said yes.
One challenge we faced was getting photos to accompany the applications. Most of the schools were really in poor neighborhoods and they had no cameras or the ability to buy them. Thankfully, Ken Mills, a good friend of mine and college roommate, worked at Polaroid and agreed to take a meeting. After presenting our program, I asked Ken and his boss Jim Hawkins, if Polaroid would consider donating some instant cameras to us. They couldn’t have been nicer and agreed to give us 250 cameras. I was overwhelmed – but a little nervous. I told Jim and Ken to remember that this was a pilot program. I had no idea how many kids we might find. I’ll never forget, what jim said, “If we found and saved one kid it would all be worth it.” I really appreciated that.
Within just a few months after having the idea, we were ready to test our program in 89 pilot schools. The only holdup was in getting final permission from the New York City Board of Education. Mike Schell and I kept being invited to meetings after meetings in Brooklyn at the Board of Education to discuss the pilot program and there was one delay after another. It was insane. In some meetings they would ask us how we were going to make money off this even after we had explained 100 times that we were doing this for free, to help these kids. Then their lawyers became obsessed with potential lawsuits and possible medical deaths which was just as crazy. The surgeries we would be providing for these children were very simple and safe and there was no chance of any major mishaps or deaths.
After two years of mindless meetings with bureaucrats, administrators and lawyers, and answering incredibly insulting questions both Mike and I had had just about enough. Then I received a call from one of their lawyers who told me that the only way our program could go forward was if I would personally indemnify the city of New York for any and all lawsuits or litigation I started laughing.
The idea of me personally indemnifying the city of New York which at the time had a $30 billion annual budget was so preposterous all I could do was laugh. That meant if anyone sued the city for anything related to our program, I would be responsible for all legal fees, expenses and any damages that might be awarded. It meant that I would lose my apartment and go bankrupt. It was just unbelievable that they thought I would agree to that. But after I got done laughing, I got mad because I had just wasted two years of my life putting this program together and now these idiotic bureaucrats were going undermine all of our hard work.
In a very calm voice, I told the lawyer that their request was so absurd it did not deserve a response. I also told her that I had a very tall pile of 250 polaroid cameras that have been sitting in my office for almost 2 years while we tried to navigate the endless objections, stupid questions, and ridiculous requests such as the one about indemnification. Furthermore, I told her that unless the Board of Ed gave us their approval within 48 hours I was going to call the New York Post and have them come to my office and take a picture of all these cameras that could have helped hundreds of New York city children who desperately need surgery if it weren’t for the bureaucrats and lawyers at the Board of Ed who killed our program.
Our Operation Smile program was approved the very next day..We started out as a pilot program in just 89 schools. I must say I was nervous because I didn’t know if it would work and how many children if any we would find. But it didn’t take long before the applications were pouring in. The need was much greater than we thought. We quickly expanded to 500 schools and then a year later rolled out to all 1,200 New York City schools. We found hundreds and hundreds of of students that needed surgery and we helped them get the surgery and treatment they needed for free.
There were many incredible stories that came out of our program. My favorite is the story of Julie Raymondi, a seven-year-old girl from Queens. Like most of our kids she was an illegal immigrant whose parents had just recently moved to Queens from Peru. Julie’s father died the month before we received her application. When I opened it I almost fell on the ground.The photos showed that Julie had a giant hairy nevus across half of her face.
It was amazing to me that the teachers at her school didn’t bring her to a hospital the minute they first saw her. But that’s what life is like in the poorest neighborhoods of New York City were lots of kids fall through the cracks. We rushed Julie’s photo to a surgeon at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital who had the same reaction I did. He told me that these giant hairy nevus’ always turn malignant and can kill you. He wanted to get Julie into surgery as soon as possible and we did. After surgery Julie came to a donor lunch and she brought the house down when she stood up on a chair and waved to the crowd and thanked everyone. There was not a dry eye in the house. Her surgeon came that day and told the crowd that Julie might have died if we hadn’t all helped her receive surgery. That felt pretty good.
Overall, we received thousands of applications from our inner-city school program and helped provide hundreds of life-changing surgeries for children no one else would help. It was my first, real entrepreneurial non-profit experience and I loved it. To build a charity from scratch and then watch it have an impact on so many lives was really gratifying.
A few years later, in 1995, I opened up People magazine and learned of another “Operation Smile” in Norfolk, Virginia. I flew down to Virginia to meet Bill and Kathy Magee, the co-founders of Operation Smile Virginia. He was a dentist that loves to do surgery and she was a social worker. The mission of their Operation Smile was to provide free surgery also but only for children in developing countries. The mission of our Operation Smile was to help provide surgery for American kids, so it seemed like we could accomplish a lot if we merged our two programs together.
So we did. I merged our charity into theirs and I joined the Operation Smile Virginia Board. That merger was the beginning of an adventure that would change millions of lives.
Including mine.
