Sarah Summers was born and raised in Houston, Texas and takes pride in living BIG! When Sarah was in high school she moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming with her family and says Wyoming allowed her to become her true self. She attended the University of Wyoming and aspired to become an Orthodontist, a childhood passion since the age of 9. After graduating with a degree in Zoology/Physiology and applying to many dental schools numerous times with no such luck, Sarah realized that a career in dental hygiene was a great alternative! In 2009, after completing her Associates in Dental Hygiene from Colorado Northwestern Community College Sarah moved to Grand Junction and worked in private practice for 7 years. “The best thing about working in private practice are the relationships made with patients.” The desire to help others has always been the driving force for Sarah and her dental career. The fire was lit with her first dental mission trip to Guatemala where she found herself seeing 120 patients a day. “People came from miles away and would stand in line all day just to have a tooth pulled.” On her second mission trip to the tiny island of Mayrau, only accessible by boat, Sarah spent 4 days tending to the dental hygiene needs of the island people. She was the island favorite and the people begged to have their teeth cleaned! The rawness of the mission trips and the fire to help people in desperate need of dental hygiene care gave Sarah the ability to feel comfortable in any dental setting. Back in the United States Sarah’s grandmother “Mimi” was faced with long-term, slow progressing dementia. Sarah realized that her grandmother was not able to brush her teeth and she was bed-bound. Her grandmother’s special need for a bedside dental hygienist was all of the motivation Sarah needed to establish Front Door Dental, Western Colorado’s first mobile dental hygiene service! Front Door Dental was created to help those not easily mobile get access to the preventative dental care they deserve! “Having your teeth cleaned is a necessity and a luxury, nothing feels better than clean teeth!” Sarah is on a mission to provide dental hygiene services to ALL persons with a “special need” so that they too can live a comfortable life, free of dental disease.
In her spare time Sarah can be found snowboarding, mountain biking, floating the river, gardening, and surfing the web preferably with her partner John and her Yorkie named Monkey by her side. Sarah will continue to serve on dental mission trips and hopes to help the children of India in the near future.