PHOENIX — Barbara Sommerfeldt smiled as she limbered up in the late-morning sun at the annual downtown Yuma Lettuce Days. She was getting ready for the first of three square dances for the day.
Sommerfeldt, a 69-year-old winter resident from Lethbridge, Alberta, says she feels so good when she’s in Yuma that she seldom takes part in one of the most popular snowbird activities: crossing the border to get health care and medicine in the tiny Mexican town of Algodones.
The two cities thrive on winter visitors. Yuma doubles in size to more than 160,000. Algodones counts 15,000 crossings daily.
"A lot of people come here to winter just because the cost of medicine across the border offsets the cost of being here," said Ken Rosevear, director of the Yuma Chamber of Commerce.
In the once sleepy farming village of Algodones, the streets are now bustling with elders. Tourism Director Carlos Rodriguez Maganez, who is also a local federal police officer, laughs and jokes with his friends near the border crossing.
There are 150 dentists, 25 eye doctors and general practitioners and a dozen pharmacies packed into eight square blocks in this otherwise unremarkable town of 10,000. Locals refer to it as the "dental capital of Mexico," Rodriguez said, moving a finger across his teeth for emphasis.
"Gringos" are so popular here that town merchants give away free food and drink during a welcoming festival in November. There’s also a spring party in mid-March with more freebies for the snowbirds before they head home for the summer.
There’s good reason for the generosity.
Business owners take in $150 million annually from snowbirds. That translates into upward of $2 million a day during the heart of winter, when tourists pour into medical offices to see dentists and optometrists who charge about half that of their U.S. counterparts. And, the medicine costs only a fraction of what it does 10 miles away in Yuma.
"All these people just go crazy buying things," resident Guadalupe Mercado said, proudly displaying a can full of dollars he had collected in donations for a drug- and alcohol-treatment center. "You can’t raise this much money for treating people with problems anywhere else in Mexico."
And all that money is making some very wealthy medical practitioners.
Like Bernardo Magana Padilla, a dentist and longtime date farmer who is adding four stories to his once-modest office for retail stores, restaurants and bars.
Magana and his assistants keep his six chairs full of clients and, on this day, Magana yanks all of an elderly woman’s teeth with breathtaking speed.
"We’re fast, we give good service and it costs about half of what it does in the United States," Magana said. "Why wouldn’t people leave here with a smile on their face?"
Dr. Noe Zamudio certainly is in good spirits. He owns four pharmacies, including Farmacia Algodon, which advertises its specials on a scrawled sign out front: 500 milligrams of penicillin for $3.85, 1 percent cortisone cream for $2.99. Oh yeah, and a carton of Marlboros for $15.99.
Gene Negaard of Bullhead City, Ariz., knows a good deal when they see one. Negaard says he makes the 250-mile trip to Algodones every two weeks to buy medications such as asthmas inhalers.
"If I had to buy all this stuff in Arizona, I’d probably just go broke and die," Negaard said.
Anker Rasmussen of Hillsboro, Ore., who winters throughout western Arizona, also said his frequent visits south of the border have been highly rewarding.
"I’ve had a doctor down here a number of years who has given me shots to help my aches and pains. It’s definitely better coming here than dealing with all the medical issues in the states," Rasmussen said.
Back in Yuma, Rosevear, the chamber director, sees continued good health for both cities.
Snowbirds contribute about $450 million to the local economy.
Still, the number of winter visitors decreased last year, to an estimated 75,000, compared with 90,000 in 2002, said Dunbar Norton, who owns a Yuma consulting firm.
Norton has been observing this seasonal influx for years. In the late 1970s, he said, the average age of snowbirds coming to the Yuma area was about 60. Now, it’s nearly 70.
Despite last year’s apparent drop in visitors, Rosevear expects this year’s numbers to be back up to 90,000.
Rosevear points to the expansion of RV parks on the other side of Telegraph Pass, east of Yuma.
For a long time, developers feared moving that far out. But one guy took a chance and opened a park alongside Interstate 8 in the town of Wellton, 30 miles to the east.
It’s been full all winter.
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