Woman fulfills her Everett childhood vow

Published 10:54 pm Saturday, November 3, 2007

Almost 10 years ago, a kid with a catchy name and an inspirational story won a national honor, appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” and made a bold vow.

Raised in low-income housing in north Everett, 17-year-old Liberty Franklin said in 1998 her goal was to become an orthodontist. She wanted to put straight-toothed smiles on the faces of the poor.

That year, the Everett High School girl was named national Youth of the Year by the Boys &Girls Clubs of America. She visited President Bill Clinton at the White House, met Gen. Colin Powell, and within weeks returned to Washington, D.C., as the only teen on a school violence panel.

It was also the year the Oprah show sent a crew to the Boys &Girls Club in north Everett to film a profile of Liberty. Her story was used by Oprah’s Angel Network, a fundraising program for Boys &Girls Club scholarships.

Today, Bill Tsoukalas isn’t a bit surprised that Liberty Franklin Micheals is doing exactly what she said she’d do.

“She was on a mission,” said Tsoukalas, executive director of Boys &Girls Clubs of Snohomish County. “She had the commitment to breaking the cycle she knew was prevalent in her own family.”

At 26, Micheals is a third-year dental student at the University of Washington School of Dentistry. After completing the four-year program, she aims to specialize in orthodontics. That will add about three years to her training, either at UW or at another school. She’s already working with patients at the UW and the 45th Street Community Clinic in Seattle, which serves low-income and homeless people.

Her own struggles have helped her relate to patients in a way most health professionals can’t.

“I was just talking to a patient about this,” Micheals said Thursday. “He and I were the first people to graduate from high school in our families, and the first people to go on to higher education. Neither of us knew our fathers. Coming from the background I come from, I get to relate in a different way.”

Micheals, who is divorced, was recently in Washington, D.C., again as one of eight former winners at the Boys &Girls Clubs of America’s 60th anniversary celebration of the Youth of the Year program. She was recognized with a President’s Volunteer Service Award.

“I’ve been volunteering with the Crest Cavity-Free zone, a partnership with the Boys &Girls Clubs, teaching different age groups about how to avoid cavities,” said Micheals, who lives in Seattle’s Northgate area.

Although education has taken her a world away, she often visits family in the Grandview and Baker Heights housing of her youth. Her mother, Mary Antoine, a sister and other family members still live there.

Nearby is the Everett Boys &Girls Club where Liberty found refuge from poverty, drugs and trouble. She remembers getting off a bus from school and walking past her house so she could do homework at the club. “In those days, it was five of us on welfare,” she said. “In terms of education, there wasn’t a whole lot.”

Beating tough odds, she graduated from high school with a 3.95 grade point average. At the UW, she paid undergraduate tuition with a $25,000 scholarship from the Oprah program and help from local clubs, among them Rotary, the Lions and the Elks.

It wasn’t out of the blue that she chose orthodontics as a career. Dr. William Oliver, an Everett orthodontist whose practice is largely nonprofit, remembers seeing Liberty for the first time. A foster parent had brought her, he said.

“Her teeth were just awful,” Oliver said. “She was very defensive, a tough kid with lots of piercings. She kept asking, ‘Who’s going to pay for this?’ Gradually, she got it that no one was paying.

“One day she came in and said ‘I’ve decided to be an orthodontist just like you.’ She was an eighth-grade dropout. I told her that just saying it isn’t going to get you there,” Oliver said.

Along with everything else she does, Liberty Micheals works part-time for Oliver, in a practice that continues to help kids whose lives are familiar to her.

Like nearly everyone in medical or dental school, she’s in debt with student loans.

“One thing I’ve learned, I’m my own best investment,” she said.

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.