When Sal Caminada retired from being a professor of health and nutrition at Allan Hancock College, he wanted to spend his retirement doing something good for the community.
That is how he came to volunteer at the SLO Noor Foundation, a free clinic that serves San Luis Obispo and Northern Santa Barbara County. He’s been volunteering for more than four years.
“It’s probably the best working experience I’ve ever had because the people that come in truly believe in helping and truly believe that there’s a need to help people and if they don’t get paid, that doesn’t matter,” Caminada said.
Started by Dr. Ahmad Nooristani in 2011, the nonprofit is celebrating 15 years of providing medical, dental, and vision care to those without insurance with the help of its two clinics and mobile health services.
“I think Noor is needed now more than ever,” said SLO Noor Executive Director Barbara Alarcon. “There is a large population in San Luis Obispo County that is considered the working core, because we work full time jobs and we can’t afford the premiums for Covered California but we don’t qualify for MediCal so it leaves us uninsured.”
While some people in the county have to decide between spending money on food or medical care, Alarcon said people do not need to weigh that with Noor.
“We’ll do our best to take very good care of them,” Alarcon said. “So I just want people to know we’re there and they don’t have to work themselves into the grave literally.”
Prior to SLO Noor, Alarcon had only worked in health care offices that took insurance. She found out about SLO Noor because her friend was having breathing issues and couldn’t afford to see a doctor. After doing some research, Alarcon came across the nonprofit and her friend was able to receive the help she needed.
“At Noor, you don’t need any of that because we’re just there to give equitable health care to anybody who needs it,” Alarcon said. “It does not matter who you are, we’ll get you where you’re at.”
Insurance has so many rules that “it’s kind of gotten away from good medicine,” Alarcon said.
Based on the care that patients need, Noor works with its partner organizations to schedule things like free surgeries. For one patient with a detached retina who was at risk of losing her vision, SLO Noor set her up with Pacific Eye where she got four surgeries.
“If we weren’t here, she would have never had the first surgery and she’d be fully blind right now,” Alarcon said. “She is a mother and she does work for a living so it’s made a huge difference for her to be able to continue to do so through having free surgeries.”
For some patients, the clinic finds cancer and helps them get access to treatment.
“Sometimes you get these gentlemen that are kind of machismo, they don’t want to admit that they need help, they’re kind of tough,” Alarcon said. “So we got one of these new patients. We just wore him down, kept loving on him, kept loving on him. He had really bad labs so we called him back in and we as gracefully as we could told him, we were really worried about his labs and that we needed to run more stuff.”
He was diagnosed with Leukemia, but SLO Noor caught it early enough that he could get help.
In the clinic, Caminada works as a nutritional doctor, counseling patients about their diets as a way to treat medical issues. He believes in treating the patient, regardless of immigration status, what they look like, or anything else.
“In our clinic, we want patients to come in, we want them to feel safe, right? Especially in this political climate,” Caminada said. “We want them to be safe and we want to provide great health care for them and we want them to leave happy.”
Alarcon said seeing the direct impact of the patients getting healthier, loosening up and getting to know them is a beautiful process and she is blessed to be around people who show up for their community.
“We are just a beautiful free clinic that can, I would say, compete with any other office out there,” Alarcon said. “You can’t tell we’re a free clinic.”
Highlight
• Santa Barbara County will present plans for the new Orcutt Library project at a public workshop on June 30. During the workshop, attendees will have the opportunity to see how community input has translated into the proposed schematic design for the library and learn more about the project’s progress. The design team will present the updated building and site layout, architectural character, and program elements while seeking additional feedback from the public for the next phase of design. The workshop runs from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Oasis Center, 420 Soares Ave. in Orcutt.
Intern Katy Clark wrote this. Reach the editor at clanham@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in June 18 – June 25, 2026.
