EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE: The Journey to a Perfect Smile

BURGAW, NC (WWAY) — The son of a migrant worker would decide he didn’t want to go to school anymore. The father would make him work full time in the fields with him, instead. About three days later the boy was back in school. Our Extraordinary Person of the Week is on ‘A Journey to the Perfect Smile’.
“My parents used to be migrant workers,” Gustavo Gasca told Daniel Seamans. ” We used to migrate from Florida to North Carolina to Michigan then back to Florida for different cropping seasons.”

We begin with the life of a migrant family.

“4-5 months in Florida,” Gasca said, “then moved here(NC) for blueberry season for 2-3 months at a time, then to Michigan.”

By 11th grade, Gustavo Gasca, aka “Gus” and his family settled down in Pender County.

But Gus’s journey was just getting started. He would start mentoring hispanics in hopes of lowering school dropout rates. He became a Seahawk and got a business degree from UNCW and starting going on job interviews. But, something just didn’t feel right.

“I just didn’t didn’t fit in, it wasn’t for me,” Gus said of his travels on job interviews.

Business just wasn’t his calling. Then it happened. A chance encounter with a stranger during a road trip would spark something.

“He was like, why don’t you consider dentistry, and I was like, eh”

That conversation would lead to some job shadowing within’ the Pender County community.

“I was able to see what they did for the needy, patients who don’t have insurance,” Gus said. “I was like, I think I would like this.”

That liking would lead to dental school at East Carolina University and yet another chance encounter, of sorts, when an instructor asked about his plans after graduating.

“I was like, I would like to go home to my small town, I’m sure you don’t know the name, she said, what is it? I said Burgaw, NC.”

The gigantic world we live in was about to be extraordinarily small.

“I’m aware of Burgaw,” the ECU assistant director would say. ” I used to fill in for a dentist who was out on maternity leave. Her name was Dr. Valerie Pollock,” she continued.
Gus was shocked. “I was like, no way! That’s my dentist, or former dentist.”

Wouldn’t you know it? His former dentist would now become his co-worker.

And so we end where we began, in Burgaw, where the journey continues for Gus, now a dentist.

From the fields of Pender County to the dentist chairs of the same, Gustavo Gasca, you’re an inspiration to so many people…and that makes you, Extraordinary.

Gus told me that he owes it all to his parents who wanted a better life for him and his siblings and is forever grateful.
Keep up the good work, Gus!
-Daniel

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