San Clemente teenager makes a difference through blood pressure screenings

Rohen Vargo enjoys his Wealth, Poverty and Ethics class at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School, though what he learns can sometimes be troubling.

The St. Margaret’s junior analyzed a heat map of south Orange County and found that San Juan Capistrano had one of the lowest rates of yearly preventive healthcare checkups.

“So many things are different if you drive like 10 miles; the difference in life expectancy and the difference in the average people who go to see a primary care physician every year,” Rohen said. “It’s kind of shocking to me, in comparison to Laguna Beach or Newport. I wanted to learn more.”

He reached out to a health equity group at UC Irvine. The teacher of the class at St. Margaret’s, Victor Cota, is also the school’s director of equity and inclusion. He told Rohen that maybe he should do a project on the subject.

Rohen reached out again. Teresa Schickling, the development director at south county nonprofit Family Assistance Ministries, said she met him at her organization’s Hunger Walk in October.

Rohen Vargo talks to a client at a blood pressure screening clinic in San Clemente on Dec. 21.

(Courtesy of Brooke Utterback / Family Assistance Ministries )

“Our partnership with him has been nothing less than what you would expect from some 50-year-old entrepreneur,” Schickling said. “He has been incredible. I keep telling him all the time, ‘Come back in two years, I’ll hire you.’ Every step of the way, no one has told him what to do, he has proposed everything he could. He’s a pretty amazing kid.”

Rohen got some seed money and purchased automated blood pressure cuffs, plus a log book so participants could track their results.

Sixty of the cuffs were given away at FAM’s Adopt-A-Family Christmas event, held at their company headquarters in San Clemente on Dec. 21. This was the launch of his “Health in Your Hands” project, as Rohen and his team were provided a booth.

Rohen also gave out a pamphlet, created in tandem with a cardiologist and a representative from the Orange County Health Care Agency, that describes what results mean and refers patients to local free clinics.

“It allows people to be proactive about their own healthcare at home,” Rohen said. “It’s not just for themselves. They can use it for their parents, their partner, their kids. Once you have it at your house, it really is a very helpful tool if you know how to use it.”

He recruited other St. Margaret’s students, Claire Martin and Sienna Ganem, to serve as translators into Spanish.

Nurse Karen Mora, who works with the Capistrano Unified School District, was another volunteer who answered Rohen’s call to help out at the event.

Nurse Karen Mora demonstrates a blood pressure cuff on Sienna Ganem during the blood pressure clinic on Dec. 21.

(Courtesy of Brooke Utterback / Family Assistance Ministries)

“We were checking the blood pressure right there at the table and showing them how to use the machines,” Mora said. “It went extremely well. We gave all of the blood pressure cuffs away. Rohen didn’t think we would give them all away, but everybody wanted them. And actually, on screening the clients there, we found that a couple of the readings were quite high. We referred them to the appropriate clinics in the area.

“I think it was a vital connection to the community and promoting health in the community. Kudos to his project; I’m glad I was a part of that.”

Rohen said many of the “Health in Your Hands” clinic visitors were Latino, Ukrainian or Russian.

One woman at the event had symptoms of headache and dizziness and had skipped her medication that morning, Rohen said. Her blood pressure categorized her as hypertension Stage 2, and her daughter was called to come pick her up and give her medication at once.

This helped show the teen how much a simple screening could accomplish.

“I was super-happy with [the event],” Rohen said. “Learning about an issue from a data standpoint, from analyzing the math, that’s completely different from actually showing up and meeting the people and seeing the benefits of the project.”

FAM, established in 1999, is one of the larger nonprofits in south Orange County and typically serves as far north as Irvine. Schickling said FAM gave out 2.6 million pounds of food in 2023, serving about 22,000 people.

Nurse Karen Mora discusses blood pressure results with a patient at a clinic on Dec. 21.

(Courtesy of Brooke Utterback / Family Assistance Ministries)

The organization also operates two shelters, the Gilchrist House for women and their children and the FAMily House.

“Our goal is prevention, first off, and second, getting people back on their feet together,” Schickling said. “As much as possible, we like to keep husbands and wives and their children together because then they stay together.”

Rohen wants to continue collaborating with the organization in the future. He said he plans to offer the same type of clinic at the two shelters if he can secure more funding.

He also hopes to forge relationships with other food pantries in San Clemente, where he lives.

Schickling won’t be surprised if he successfully meets that goal.

“So many of our clients, they don’t get the type of healthcare that they need, and a basic healthcare is blood pressure,” she said. “Rohen is very persistent, and he was very passionate about wanting to help people and help them in a different way, help them with something that they might not have available to them.”