Youth At Heart benefits from a Tulsa dentist's work

What does a trip to the dentist and a baseball game have in common? News on 6 anchor Terry Hood shows us how the unlikely combination is making kids' dreams come true in north Tulsa. <br/><br/>This

Tuesday, May 24th 2005, 9:35 am

By: News On 6

What does a trip to the dentist and a baseball game have in common? News on 6 anchor Terry Hood shows us how the unlikely combination is making kids' dreams come true in north Tulsa.

This soon-to-be graduate is looking to light up her senior pictures. She's getting her teeth whitened for a good cause. "This was just a better program and it was going somewhere that mattered."

Her dentist, Doctor Conrad Castler is donating all the proceeds from whitening procedures to three charities. In fact, he's even dropping the price by a hundred dollars to encourage more people to have it done. "We have some patients that belong to these programs here in this office, so it's a way for us to raise money locally for these programs.â€ He'll split the proceeds between the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Crisis Pregnancy Outreach, and Youth At Heart.

You may have not heard of Youth at Heart. Recreation Director Bob Corcoran says it's not on a lot of folkâ€™s radar. "We have a fleet of vans where we transport kids from some of the different community sites to North Tulsa, West Tulsa, some of the different ball fields where we get to go out with the kids and play some sports with them, keep them off the streets." The group also takes kids to college games; tennis meets, and on hiking trips, but springtime is for baseball.

Corcoran says many of these kids have never seen a real baseball game in person and even fewer think it's a game they could be a part of. "These kids that we work with, predominantly in North and West Tulsa are very skilled in basketball and love the sport, so we're just trying to introduce a new sport to them.â€

All to broaden their horizons. Who knows, maybe one day one of these little leaguers will look past the ball field, to the dentist's drill. Youth at Heart focuses on kids in public housing and Bob Corcoran says there are thousands to help.

Doctor Castler will be whitening for charity for another month.