On Saturday mornings, sometimes as early as 5 a.m., a line starts forming outside Grace United Methodist Church, 4105 Junius. Most of the people are parents and young children. Nearly everyone speaks Spanish.

They’re all seeking medical care at the church’s non-profit Agape Clinic.

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This ritual began 10 years ago when a young doctor named Bobbie Stark volunteered to help start a weekend clinic to provide free inoculations and basic medical care to low-income families in East Dallas.

Since then, an average of 50 to 100 people a week have received care at the clinic during the three hours it is open on Saturday mornings. Nearly 4,000 people, mostly children, visited the clinic in 1992.

There’s a huge gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ in this City, and Bobbie has managed to build a bridge between them,” says Rev. Bill Bryan, a pastor of Grace United Methodist.

“She lives in the Park Cities, but she spreads her heart in East Dallas.”

Stark’s commitment to this do-unto-others mission was recognized in May at the annual JCPenney Golden Rule Awards ceremony, at which she was received one of 14 awards for volunteer service in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The local award makes Stark eligible for the national award, which will be presented in September.

Awards, however, were not what Stark was looking for when she began seeking volunteer opportunities after completing an internship in internal medicine at Parkland Memorial Hospital. She was about to begin a fellowship in immunology and planned a career as an allergist, but she also wanted to do missionary work in the community.

Her initial inquiries about volunteer opportunities were met with surprise by the Dallas County Medical Society, but she finally was referred to the Los Barrios Unidos Community Clinic in West Dallas. While serving on the board of directors there, she learned of Grace United Methodist’s interest in opening an outreach clinic.

In the summer of 1983, Stark toured the small basement area planned for the clinic. She was intrigued by the historic inner-city church’s desire to serve impoverished people – many of them illegal immigrants from Mexico and Latin America.

Despite the dearth of space, equipment, modern facilities and money, she signed on. Several months later, with donated equipment and supplies, help from Stark’s Sunday school class at Highland Park United Methodist Church, and a contribution of start-up costs from the sister church, Agape Clinic opened. Its name, Stark explains, is the Greek word for “brotherly love”.

At first, Stark worked every Saturday, but over the years, she and others associated with the clinic have recruited additional volunteers. About 10 doctors, 10 nurses and 10 receptionists volunteer on a more or less regular basis, enabling Stark to cut her hours back to two Saturdays a month.

She still bears the main responsibility for obtaining drugs and other supplies and for ensuring the clinic is accomplishing its mission.

“I had thought that in my 50s, I might want to do something like start a clinic because I knew a doctor in Connecticut who had done that,” Stark says.

“He really inspired me because he was being a missionary without having to leave home. After I moved to Dallas, I realized I could maintain a practice and a home life without moving to another country.”

Still, the dozen or so miles that separate the no-frills Agape Clinic and Stark’s allergy office in North Dallas might as well be a thousand.

At the allergy office, Stark has state-of-the-art equipment and patients who have insurance or adequate income to get the care they need when they need it.

The Agape Clinic could best be described as primitive, with its donated fixtures, less-than-private examination areas and limited utilities. Patients have no insurance and probably clean the homes or cut the lawns of people in North Dallas and the Park Cities.

The payoff in East Dallas comes in the unconditional gratitude of the parents and children who receive the treatment they need after waiting patiently for an unpaid doctor, says Betty Bux, a volunteer receptionist at the clinic for the past eight years.

“Dr. Stark is very empathetic and very knowledgeable,” Bux says. “She takes her time with the patients here, and they really love her.”