Saratoga News

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Dentist Nicole Pham feels at home in her new office on Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road.

From Dares to Dentistry

Former Army dentist Nicole Pham brings planning skills and a soft touch to Saratoga

By Mary Ann Cook

Nicole Pham doesn't remember how or when the notion of becoming a dentist took root. She does remember an incident when she and her mother were making their escape from Vietnam in a boat. She was about 8 years old, and she watched a pirate on the boat trying to extract gold from the teeth of a frail old woman. It brought home to her graphically that teeth were a treasure.

And she remembers clearing things from a closet and finding an old note thanking her for work she had done for United Way when she was 14 years old. The note said, "I hope you fulfill your dream of being a dentist." She didn't realize she'd had such a dream at that age, much less confided that yearning to a colleague.

But now Pham has her own practice. The complete family dentistry office opened in June at 12297 Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road, in a new building between Prospect and Pierce roads. Because she is trained as a dental surgeon, Pham will handle everything from root canals to building bridges. She calls her operation "Gentle Dentistry."

She had just completed her first year of dental school when she was driving a friend to the Presidio so that he could drop off the required forms to apply to become a United States Army dentist. He, along with others, dared her to apply as well.

It was a dare the friend should have thought twice about: She got the job and the scholarship, and he didn't. Admittedly, Pham just doesn't look the part. She's barely 5 feet tall and slender as a reed, and she grew up with servants. Her father was in international trade; her mother worked for the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam.

All this was before the fall of Saigon, and all these factors pointed to the fact that the family should leave the country. After several attempts and even the arrest of a family member, they finally got out. Her view of the Army was intensely personal: It meant fear to her, fleeing her country to save the family from arrest or possibly even death.

Her colleagues knew her background, but they didn't count on her reaction to a dare. She got the required forms in order, submitted them and (even though she missed the deadline by a day or two), got the scholarship and became a lieutenant in the Army.

After her dental schooling, she was sent to Fort Sam Houston in Texas for Army training. By now she was a captain. There, a whole new culture awaited--not only the Army culture, but the Texas culture as well.

One of the hardest things for Pham to do was figure out whom she was supposed to salute first and who was required to salute her first. There were so many ranks to learn. She decided to concentrate on the upper ranks, the ones she needed to salute first, since their numbers were fewer.

For the lower ranks, she had only to return a salute, which was far easier. In the early weeks, if she saw a large group approaching, she'd duck into a building until they were past to avoid the decision-making and the endless salutes.

Pham may have joined the Army on a dare, but now she can't sing enough the praises of Army life. True, it's a hard, exacting life, and your location is bound to change on short notice, but Pham is well aware of what the Army gave her.

She received a full scholarship for her last three years of dental school, and she saw most of Europe because she traveled almost every weekend while stationed in Germany. But most important was the maturity that came with the rigors of Army training.

"I learned to be more caring, more sympathetic. I became a better person, more mature. I had more hunger to learn. And I became more flexible," she says. "As a result, I feel I'm mature beyond my years."

Army training at Fort Sam Houston meant rising early, sometimes as early as 4:30 a.m., and included a tough physical regime of push-ups, marching and other exercises. Once the training was over, there was no telling where she'd be sent or what that assignment would bring.

After her stint in Germany, Pham was the only dentist from the West Coast chosen to go to forensic school at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Pham's Army duty was completed in the summer of '96, though she's still in the reserves. Because her last Army assignment was in Monterey, she could scour various Bay Area locations from that vantage point to decide where she wanted to locate.

And she could start designing her own office from the molding up, including the mobile work stations, hydrosonic cleaning equipment, a filtered water system, designs on the ceramic tile and a color scheme of sand and blue, chosen so the office would reflect a "clean and friendly" feeling. In short, every nail and cornice was under her supervision.

"I'm a perfectionist," she says. Standing over workmen putting on the finishing touches, making sure every inch went according to plan, the diminutive dentist may have tried their patience at the time, but her persistence paid off. Many of those who helped build the office are now patients, she says.

Going to the dentist is not the place most of us would consider the place to relax, but Pham can unabashedly say to a patient who admits he's tired and has had a rough day, "You're with me now: you can relax." And, even more amazing, he does.

A woman dentist brings a more soothing, nurturing quality to the profession, Pham says. Add to that the fact that a woman's hands are smaller than a man's, which enables her to maneuver adroitly around a mouth. And Pham's hands are smaller than most women's.

"Because her hands are small, you don't have to open your mouth as wide. Your jaw doesn't feel as uncomfortable as it often does when you visit the dentist," patient Robert Greene says. "She's almost the perfect dentist for me--gentle touch, latest techniques and flexible hours."

One thing Pham says she most cherishes about the Army is the camaraderie it instills. She can look at a soldier and know his life, sympathize with his problems and yearnings and feel a bond. When she sees a uniform, her heart goes out.

"It causes something here," she says, tapping her breast. She knows how hard, how rigorous the life is. In the Army, she sometimes saw 40 patients a day. But she also experienced how rewarding a life it can be. When she meets former Army people, she can establish almost instant rapport. A bonding takes place because of the similarities of their Army experiences.

She mentions a friend at Blaines' Lighting across the highway from her office as an example. They were friends from the beginning, she says, and that instant kinship was the result of their having both been in the Army.

As a Vietnam native, Pham has had to adjust to many different cultures in her lifetime. Fortunately, she says, learning languages comes easily to her. When she lived in Germany she went to school to learn German, and she was already fluent in French and English, as well as her native tongue.

She was 12 when she came to California and enrolled in junior high in Sunnyvale. Although she didn't know the language, she was forced to learn it-- and quick. And she made friends easily, none of whom were of Asian descent. "I was never shy," she grins. She attended Santa Clara High School and UC-Davis, earning a degree in biochemistry. Then came dental school at the University of the Pacific in San Francisco.

Since moving back to this area, Pham has become involved in activities that celebrate her native country. She is chairman of the Vietnamese Cultural Heritage Garden, a nonprofit organization in San Jose. The garden is on 5.5 acres on Lone Bluff Way near Capitol Expressway and Highway 101. It is slated to open in five years, a peaceful place where people can learn about exotic plants from the Far East. It will be the only such garden in the world, Pham says.

Although able to embrace many cultures, it is the culture of dentistry that is at the center of her life now as she establishes her practice, with her assistant Christine Le and receptionist Tu Le. The staff takes lunch from 2 to 3 p.m. so patients have the convenience of making appointments during their lunch hours.

"I enjoy dentistry so much more than I ever expected," Pham says.

And her patients seem to enjoy her just as much. Patient Vicki Tindel said she, along with four generations of her family, had been going to the same dentist for 35 years. But now, Tindel has switched.

"So, you can see what she means to me," Tindel says. "She has a caring approach, listens to you, is genuinely concerned. She explains everything thoroughly, including the technical end if you want to hear that. Everything is so sterile, up-to-date...and she looks at other alternatives to treatment."

"It's a big challenge and it has so many aspects, such as cosmetics and art forms [as in making dentures]. I get so much out of it. I enjoy people and I consider my patients my extended family. I want it to be a close-knit family practice."

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