"Everyone Has the Right to Health Care.": Meet a Volunteer Helping Owatonna Keep Up With Demand

Every week, for half a day, Mieca Valen sees patients at HealthFinders’ clinic in Owatonna. Some are managing diabetes or high blood pressure. Some need labs updated, medications refilled, or a pap test scheduled. Almost all of them are people who couldn’t easily get this kind of care anywhere else nearby — and many are people HealthFinders has never met before.

Mieca is a volunteer.

She’s a retired family nurse practitioner who spent more than three decades in family practice, including years of work in migrant health, and 20 years teaching in the nurse practitioner program at Winona State University. A few of her students completed projects at HealthFinders years ago, so when she retired and started looking for a way to keep practicing, she already knew where to call.

“I feel like everyone has the right to health care,” she said. “That’s just always been the piece for me.”

The timing worked out. HealthFinders was reopening its Owatonna clinic in its newly expanded space, and Mieca signed up to see scheduled primary care patients one day a week. Her schedule hasn’t had an empty slot since.

A Schedule That Keeps Filling Up

“I’ve been kind of surprised in some ways with how many new patients there are,” Mieca said. Some travel down from Northfield, where clinics are full. Others were previously seen in Faribault and are relieved to be seen closer to home. But increasingly, her patients are people who have never set foot in a HealthFinders clinic before — Spanish-speaking families, Somali patients, and neighbors who have lived in Owatonna their whole lives but never had a regular place for care.

“I think it definitely demonstrates that there’s a need,” she said. One patient she saw recently hadn’t been able to take her medications in three years. “She didn’t have a place to be seen, and she didn’t have the funds,” Mieca said. “She was so anxious when she came in — I think she thought she was going to get scolded.” Instead, they talked through what was actually possible for her and started there.

“People need somewhere they trust, to ask questions,” Mieca said. “Sometimes it’s just basic health literacy — the kind of thing you’d ask a friend, or your mom. A lot of people don’t have anybody to ask.”

Room for More Volunteer

Mieca is quick to point out that her full schedule isn’t really about her.

“I would certainly think other providers’ schedules would fill too,” she said. “Nobody knew who I was when I started.” What patients need, she said, is simply for someone to be there consistently, so word can spread and follow-up care can happen.

“Volunteers like Mieca are exactly what make an expansion like Owatonna real,” said Daisey Sanchez, HealthFinders’ Associate Director. “We can build the space — but it’s people who show up, week after week, who turn it into a clinic our neighbors can count on. We’re actively looking for more providers to join her.”

Mieca said HealthFinders makes it easy: providers can set their own days, hours, and even the kinds of patients they want to see. “It’s rewarding work,” she said. “Providing primary care always is. Patients are so gracious.” And she’s quick to add, the benefit doesn’t move in only one direction: “I probably get more out of it than I give. I go home and I feel happy. I feel like I’ve used the skills I have.”

Building Something Owatonna Can Trust

Mieca happens to live within walking distance of the clinic. “It’s incredibly amazing,” she said. “So that’s kind of meant to be, I guess.”

She sees her work as part of something bigger than any one appointment. “I think the more confidence we can build in the health care system, the better for the health of our community,” she said. “I think as individual people come in and feel like they're heard and that they can trust someone in healthcare, I think then that hopefully will spread throughout that community.”

She points to the crowd at Oak Hill Community Connection’s recent open house — “not a place to park in the parking lot” — as a sign of how much momentum is already building at the site, where health care now sits alongside housing, food, and mental health support, all under one roof. “I think it’s kind of exciting that the timing matched up like that,” she said. 

Moments like these are only possible because people keep showing up for Owatonna — as patients, as volunteers, as donors, and as neighbors who help spread the word that care is here. It takes $1.5 million in community support each year to sustain HealthFinders’ work across Rice and Steele counties.

If you know a provider who might want to volunteer, or if you want to help support care like Mieca’s, we’d love to hear from you.