Andrew Lai was listening to the radio nearly four months ago when an advertisement caught his attention.
The ad described a contest for a $10,000 home makeover. As a dentist in Oak Harbor, Lai started thinking about how offering a $10,000 dental makeover could affect a patient.
“I started thinking, ‘What’s that really going to do?’?” he said of the home makeover contest. “You might be able to renovate a kitchen.
“We might be able to change somebody’s life.”
So Lai got together with his staff at Platinum Dental and a contest was born.
He launched the “$10,000 Dream Smile Makeover Contest” on June 2 on a social media website.
Last week, the contest winner was revealed after she arrived for her first appointment to let Lai determine the scope of the dental makeover.
The name that was drawn belonged to Nicoyia Martinez, 20, of Oak Harbor.
She arrived at the dental clinic on Barrington Drive with her boyfriend, Christopher Lintz, last Wednesday to meet Lai and his staff and see for herself if the dental clinic and its contest were for real.
“I’ve never won anything in my life before,” she said. “This is too big to win for the first time.”
“I told a lot of people about it too,” Lintz said. “They said, ‘It’s probably fake.’?”
They soon learned the contest not only was legitimate, it would go beyond what was promised.
After examining X-rays and taking his own look at Martinez’s teeth and gums, Lai explained to his client what his course of action would be.
He went over a treatment plan that would require seven appointments (one with oral surgeon Prabhjot Singh) and include teeth whitening, the removal of four wisdom teeth, the filling of five cavities and installation of 12 crowns with a newer, harder, more translucent material to improve her bite, as well as the appearance of her teeth cosmetically.
Lai said the crowns will allow Martinez’s teeth to align correctly, taking pressure off her upper and lower incisors when she bites down.
They also will correct the appearance of any crooked and crowded front teeth.
“When she’s done, it’s going to look like a Hollywood smile,” Lai said.
To be exact, it’s going to be an $18,940.64 smile.
But Lai isn’t charging Martinez for his services, nor was he planning to worry about the work exceeding the original $10,000 contest limit.
“It shows what we can do as a dental clinic,” he said. “It’s also helping people out.
“It’s going to change a smile.”
A bad experience with a previous dentist three years ago, coupled with a lack of dental insurance, has kept Martinez from returning to a dentist’s chair until this contest came about.
She almost didn’t have a chance.
The original winner was Oak Harbor’s Jamie Dawson, but she declined the prize because of the dental coverage she already was receiving through the Navy.
Platinum Dental’s social media following went from 120 people to more than 1,000 over the course of the contest, according to Evelyn Chandra, the office manager.
Martinez, who works at Donut Master, was glad she began following the page and was happy with her first trip back to see a dentist in three years.
She said she didn’t feel nervous with the 36-year-old Lai, who has been in practice for 11 years, including the past three in Oak Harbor.
“It feels too good to be true,” Martinez said. “I don’t think I could be more grateful.”
The idea of making a profound difference in a person’s life appealed to Lai.
He said the social media experiment is turning out well, adding that Dawson’s decision to give up her prize to someone who didn’t have coverage was a nice gesture that was lauded on his clinic’s social media page.
“It’s heartwarming,” he said.
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