r. Herbert M. Hughes wants his patients to have good teeth. He also wants them to have fun at the holidays. To accomplish both goals, he started “buying back” candy a few years ago to give the children incentive to give up their candy, while getting something back for it.
“After Halloween we have our traditional Candy Buy Back Program where we encourage the kids to bring us their candy in order to promote good oral hygiene and reduce the amount of breakage to their braces” said Hughes, owner of Hughes Orthodontics. “As an incentive, we give $5 per pound of candy [$3 per pound goes to the Carpenter’s Shelter and $2 per pound goes to the patient or child that brought the candy]. The kids went above and beyond this year with a total amount of candy weighing over 225 pounds. I dropped off a check for $700 to the Carpenter’s Shelter yesterday.”
Hughes said that they sent some of the candy to Kurt Sanchez, a former employee who joined the Navy this summer and is serving overseas on the USS Truman.
“We made him a goodie package with candy and pictures of our staff at Halloween. The rest of the candy has been sent around the world,” Hughes said. “We have a very diverse staff from around the world and they wanted to send candy to the children of their home countries." They sent candy to Thuy Ngo’s home in Vietnam, Lyudmilla Bessabarova sent candy to Russia and Abdul Waheed took a suitcase full to Pakistan last week.