Sofía Fonseca-Pérez has known she wanted to go into medicine since middle school.
“I want to give back to people,” she said. “Everyone deserves access to health care, regardless of their background.”
That belief has held steady through every turn her path has taken since. At San Diego State University, she chose kinesiology as her major not because it was the most direct route into medicine, but because, in her words, “it is interesting to me.” She spends a lot of her time at the library. She describes it plainly: she truly loves it.
That same belief found a specific shape in a childhood memory. When Sofía was young, her cousin lost the tip of a finger in an accident. She watched surgeons rebuild it.
“I love reconstructive surgery, not necessarily for beautification reasons,” she said. “I also love the impact that surgery can have on someone.”
Sofía is going into her third year at SDSU now, still deciding between pre-med and pre-dental, with reconstructive and oral surgery, cleft palates, burn injuries, the kind of work that gives someone back a version of themselves, pulling at her the strongest.
The Work in Tijuana
That same belief carries into her work as Public Health Chair on the executive board of the SDSU Flying Samaritans.
Flying Samaritans is a student-run nonprofit that has organized monthly free clinics in Tijuana for years, in partnership with a network of doctors, dentists, and other health professionals from the San Diego area. There are nine chapters across California and Arizona. San Diego became the hub, close enough to the border to build something sustained rather than sporadic. The SDSU chapter’s clinics are held in coordination with La Parroquia San Eugenio de Mazenod Morita, a parish in La Morita, Tijuana, that opens its space to the group once a month, turning its floor into an exam room, a pharmacy, a waiting room full of neighbors.
857 patients seen. 430 prescriptions filled. 2,353 pieces of clothing handed to someone who needed them. All in a single school year.
The executive board is made up entirely of students. They run the clinics, and they write the letters of recommendation for the doctors who volunteer there when those doctors apply for other jobs. It’s an unusual reversal, students vouching for physicians, but it reflects how the organization works. The students are the constant. The providers rotate in and out, and it is the SDSU chapter that has built trust with the community over time.
Seventeen students hold that board together. They meet every other week, and in between, smaller committees for public health, medical Spanish, marketing, and the website keep their pieces moving. Clinic day itself is a full Sunday given up once a month, no small thing to ask of anyone carrying a full course load.
Sofía has done a lot to earn that trust herself. She speaks Spanish fluently, and she’s found that the language does more than translate words.
“You can connect with the community when you speak the language,” she said. “Many are repeat customers.”
As Public Health Chair, she picks a health topic each month based on what she hears the community needs, then builds an informative pamphlet around it. This month, mental health. The themed items going out with it are fidget toys and coloring books. Next month, at the August 23 clinic, the topic shifts to diabetes, with a meeting on July 19 to prepare.
Not everyone who comes through the clinic is able to read. So she’s built QR codes into the materials, and leans on hands-on teaching, things people can practice and remember, rather than pamphlets alone. There are stations built for children too, so they can learn the same practices and bring them home to their parents.
Every registered patient leaves with four pieces of clothing, a bag of groceries, and one item tied to that month’s theme: a flashlight, a basic health kit, whatever fits.
Psychiatric services were added recently, a direct answer to what the team kept seeing: stress on parents, difficult living conditions, the strain of immigration status, weighing on families month after month. Vaccinations and the stigma around seeking health care are the current focus.
On any given Sunday, the clinical team is small: about five doctors, one or two dentists, a dental hygienist, an optometrist, a physical therapist, doing whatever the day requires. Optometry runs twice a month, including free glasses. Many patients live with diabetes, which affects vision over time, so the team is also looking at adding free sunglasses.
Beyond the Border
Sofía attends the Tijuana clinic once a month and takes part in additional promotional trips to build relationships in the surrounding communities. Much of that outreach spreads by word of mouth rather than flyers or advertising.
“Being there to listen helps,” she said.
When she’s in San Diego, the work continues locally too, including outreach with people experiencing homelessness and a partnership with Panera to route food resources where they’re needed.
Her experience abroad extends beyond Tijuana. Through SDSU-affiliated medical trips, she has provided primary care in the Dominican Republic and Guatemala, often setting up in a community center or, when nothing else is available, someone’s front yard. Those trips left an impression on how she thinks about health.
“You see patterns that develop there that cause the issues we see,” she said, pointing to the different lifestyles and diets she encountered and the health conditions that follow from them.
She has served as a Spanish translator for cleft palate surgeons in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and shadowed surgeons in Mexico City. In her senior year at SDSU, her kinesiology coursework will pair her with an individual patient whose care plan she’ll help develop and follow over the semester.
“Seeing their faces, hearing them share their stories or give updates on their life now that they trust you,” she said, is what makes the work worth it.
“When they see you come back, see the smiling faces, it’s really moving and memorable,” she said.
The harder part, she said, is “making sure these services are accessible to everyone possible.” The clinic serves patients from infants through the elderly, each with different requirements the team has to be ready for.
What’s Next
Sofía’s instinct to show up for people extends past the clinic, too. She volunteers with Every Child Plays, working with children with autism on sports activities.
She has a clear next step in mind. Sofía recently earned her certification as a medical assistant, and she plans to take a gap year or two after graduating to work in the field and practice what she’s learned firsthand before going further in her education, toward the reconstructive or oral surgery training that has pulled at her since she was a kid watching her cousin’s hand heal.
How LumenSparQ Is Supporting Sofía
We’re glad to be part of what Sofía is building. LumenSparQ is purchasing materials for this month’s mental health clinic theme, and likely next month’s diabetes theme as well. We’re also coordinating the movement of gently used clothing and reusable water bottles her way, the kind of donation logistics we wrote about in “Where the Boxes Go,” toward the same drives that put four pieces of clothing in every patient’s hands. The chapter’s donation drives keep that clothing rack stocked, and larger sizes in particular tend to run short. It’s a gap we’re happy to help close, one bag at a time.
Everyone deserves access to health care, regardless of their background. Sofía has believed that since middle school. What she’s built since then is something bigger than a career path. It’s a monthly promise kept to a community across a border, one pamphlet, one prescription, one familiar face at a time.
She joins a growing list of leaders LumenSparQ has had the privilege of introducing, people who saw a need and didn’t wait for permission to start closing it. If there’s a takeaway in her story, it may be this: that same instinct is probably closer to home than it seems. It’s worth looking for, and worth backing when you find it.
It is a privilege to celebrate Sofía as LumenSparQ’s newest SparQ.