Smile Network: New faces, new futures

Kim Valentini has a gorgeous smile. Now she's made it her life's work to give the gift of a healthy grin to those born without one.

Cleft palates, those birth defects mislabeled as "harelips" in less progressive times, are easy to fix -- if you have access to modern health care and a way to pay for it. But millions of children around the world do not. For the one in 700 to 3,000 -- depending on the geographic region -- who are born with some variation of this defect, it can mean a lifetime of shame, social isolation and even fatal starvation if left untreated.

Valentini had those children in mind when she decided to launch the Smile Network, a Minneapolis nonprofit that would reach around the world. Eight years ago, she was director of international sales for Schussler Creative, the company behind the Rainforest Cafe and other concept restaurants. Before that, she managed tourism and marketing for the Mall of America.

"I was thinking I wanted to leave the corporate world and do something more meaningful before I turned 50," she said. "I never had a child with a cleft palate as part of my life, but I knew this was something so devastating, yet so simple to repair."

That was in 2003. Today the Smile Network's platoons of volunteers, including doctors and other medical professionals, go on annual missions to nine countries, from East Africa and India to Central America, making hundreds of damaged faces whole again.

The Smile Network is often confused with Smile Train, a New York-based organization that is much more nationally recognized due to its frequent advertising.

Valentini explains the difference: "They are primarily a funding organization supporting the work of local doctors. We take Western medical teams into the country to perform the operations, often to rural areas not served by other charities and, when possible, train the doctors there to become self-sufficient in cleft technique."

The group's virgin voyage was to Guerrero, Mexico, a mountainous, impoverished area inland from Acapulco. Since then, they've been back several times, and some of Valentini's most heartwarming stories are about the children of Guerrero. Take the five boys, ages 8 to 12, who walked 20 hours through the mountains to reach the surgeons.

"None of them had eaten, and they had no shoes," Valentini said. "But each one carried a big bag of mangoes, gifts to present to the team. These people who had absolutely nothing, it was important to them to give something in exchange."

Then there was teenager Oscar, who worked in a restaurant kitchen but dreamed of becoming a waiter. He had received a badly botched cleft-lip repair as a small child, markedly disfiguring his face, and had recently tried to kill himself in despair. He came to the Smile Network for a palate repair, not lip work, "but when the surgeon saw him, already anesthetized, we got permission from his mother to redo his upper lip and nose, too," Valentini said. "When he came to, he was very happily surprised. And when we visited him nine months later, he was working as a waiter -- and engaged."

The hardest thing the volunteers have to do is turn hopeful parents away.

"Because they can't eat well, some babies are too weak to have the operation and we know we might not see them again the next year," Valentini said.

Dr. Raj Sarpal, a Mayo Clinic-trained cardiac anesthesiologist with the University of Minnesota, led a mission to Uganda in mid-June, the Smile Network's first effort in Africa and his 22nd trip. From his perspective, this kind of volunteering is particularly rewarding. He said that volunteering his medical services hasn't gotten old.

"This isn't a long-term wait for results like cancer research -- it's immediate," he said. "You should see the faces of these parents when we bring the kids out of surgery. They have nothing; sometimes they have sold everything to bring their kids to the mission, not even knowing if they will be accepted. They sleep on the ground outside the hospitals. I've worked on hundreds of kids, and I never get over it."

As Sarpal was boarding a plane in Minneapolis for his first mission, Valentini told him and the other doctors, "Here's where you check your egos."

Sarpal said he was "immensely offended. There we were, professionals who thought we didn't need someone who's not a doctor telling us how to behave. But now I know. It's amazing to see the egos rear up when we're all on a level playing field and no one is catering to you. Kim was right. She always is, but I'll never admit that to her."

Valentini lives in a restored Victorian house surrounded by lush foliage in Minneapolis' Kenwood neighborhood with her husband, attorney David Valentini, and their teenage children, Isabella and Gino. The whole family is very involved with Mom's nonprofit: David as key fundraiser, and the teens as Smile Network travel adventurers. The adventures, another fundraising tool, sometimes involve hiking in exotic locales, and others combine travel with the chance to meet the child whom your money is helping, and even carry him or her from the operating room to the waiting parents.

"Her name was Rosalina," Marchionda said. "She and I just connected. You know how a baby opossum clings to its mother? She hung onto me like that. I watched her operation. The surgeon kept telling me to come closer. My chin was on his shoulder."

Intensity helps

Greg Frankenfield, chairman of the Smile Network's board, has known Valentini since they attended high school together in Fridley.

"She's always thrown herself into anything she does: cheerleading, student government and now surgical missions," said Frankenfield, who owns a software-consulting company in Golden Valley. "She tends to leave some things to the last minute -- I'm more of a planner-- but she is fearless. Once, a hospital director tried to make her give him money under the table, back payments to allow the mission. Instead of being polite, she said, 'We never do that; we won't give you a dime.' He stopped the car, pushed her out and left her standing in the middle of a foreign city. Didn't faze her in the least."

That passion and tenacity have helped Valentini push through the diplomatic roadblocks she has encountered when dealing with Third World governments. Her second-greatest accomplishment, after dramatically reversing children's life prospects, appears to be working around bribe demands and misguided nationalistic pride.

Then, there she goes. There's a waiting list of 5,000 kids in Calcutta.

Kristin Tillotson • 612-673-7046