One of the most memorable incidents of my junior high school years was of being saved.
Not in a religious way; I was saved from what most likely would have been humiliation at best, a beating at worst. It happened one afternoon while I was walking home from school. I was partway down an alley used as a shortcut when three bullies came after me for no obvious reason. They were complete strangers.
They backed me up against a fence, said some things that can’t be printed in a general circulation newspaper and were threatening to rearrange my face when a boy walking home from my school intervened.
He was an imposing presence, a head taller than any of us. He didn’t swear at the bullies or raise his voice. He just calmly told them to leave me alone and go on their way, and they did. There was a presence about him that commanded respect.
His name was Terry Reilly, a name now well known as the founder of Terry Reilly Health Services – currently celebrating its 55th anniversary.
Like many young men at the time, he was opposed to the Vietnam War, enough so that he was given conscientious objector status and did two years of community service helping poor people. Because many of them didn’t have doctors, they used emergency rooms for primary care, racking up huge bills. This was his primary inspiration for starting TRHS, to give them the care they needed for what they could afford to pay.
Reilly was an early VISTA volunteer. Volunteers in Service to America, is a program designed to combat poverty. He also studied to become a Catholic priest.
That wasn’t surprising; priests devote their lives to helping people. Reilly didn’t become a priest, but he clearly wanted to help people.
While working for VISTA, he met a fellow volunteer named Rosie and experienced something few people do.
“It was love at first sight,” Rosie Delgadillo Reilly recalled.
They were married two years later.
TRHS started in their home in 1971.
“It was a house with four apartments,” she said. “It really should have been condemned. We lived in one of the apartments. That’s where it (TRHS) started.”
It started on a shoestring. The first actual clinic was in a space in a Nampa grocery store building. Terry and Rosie Reilly and several staff members purchased in1973 for $600. It had one doctor. Its “pharmacy” was a meat locker. A grant allowed it to be razed and a new building to replace it.
“It was the first community health clinic in Idaho,” Reilly said.
Tragically, Terry Reilly was killed in a plane crash in 1986. TRHS, however, not only survived him but has grown exponentially. As it observes its 55th anniversary, it is providing services far beyond what those that were offered, or perhaps even imagined, in its early days.
From that first clinic with a single volunteer doctor in a former grocery store, it has expanded to 122 doctors and and other health care providers working at 22 clinics in Boise, Nampa, Caldwell, Marsing, Homedale and Middleton. Another clinic is being built in Parma.
TRHS offers medical, dental, behavioral health, pharmacy, obstetrics and pediatric care. Beyond its clinics, it offers services at the Ada County Victim Services Center, Nampa Family Justice Center, Allumbaugh House, New Path Housing, a clinic at Interfaith Sanctuary, and supportive housing locations in Boise, Nampa and Caldwell, as well as school-based therapy and mobile medical and dental clinics at schools, rural areas and skilled nursing facilities.
It serves more than 42,000 patients a year, a majority of whom live below the federal poverty level despite working. Nearly two thirds have no insurance. Without TRHS, many would find it difficult or impossible to receive the care they need.
TRHS “patient navigators” help them apply for Medicaid, Medicare and Children Health Insurance, connect patients with housing services, locate food pantries, make referrals for legal assistance, employment and Internet access, arrange transportation to health appointments and provide case management services and help in applying for assistance programs that they’re eligible to receive.
The family of a four-year-old boy named Titus came to TRHS because he didn’t seem to be developing properly. This led to a diagnosis of autism. TRHS workers helped the family get health insurance and start receiving the care he needed. A year later, he’d gone from being non-verbal to walking to a bulletin board and naming every color and letter on it.
A domestic violence victim named Brenda suffered from a brain injury and memory loss. A TRHS team connected her with multiple resources that helped her heal and remain employed and stable. Four years later, her provider said no one would ever guess that she’d had a traumatic brain injury.
Bottom line: The organization Terry Reilly started on a shoestring all those years ago has helped and continues to help thousands of people. I can only imagine how good that would make him feel.
If you’d like to help, donations may be made online at trhs.org or by sending a check to: Terry Reilly Health Services, 211 Sixteenth Avenue North, P.S. Box 9, Nampa, ID 83653.
Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@gmail.com
Tim Woodward 