GREENSBORO, N.C. — Tough times can inspire us, motivate us, and help us find our passion. This week's featured 'Mo on the Go' phenomenal woman is walking a path she never imagined, but hopes she's making her dad smile in heaven while doing it with the 'Best Smile.'
"Things are going to happen when they need to happen," Dr. DeShield-Mayes, owner of Best Smile Dental of Greensboro, said.
This was a tough truth that Dr. DeShield-Mayes had to face.
"Coming straight out of dental school, I said to myself 'I'm going to buy a practice," Dr. DeShield-Mayes said.
She first joined a Greensboro dentist office as an associate with a plan.
"The plan was to purchase his office but, at the end of that time, things changed," Dr. DeShield-Mayes said. "He didn't want to sell his practice at that time. He wanted me to continue to be an associate."
Seven years later, Dr. DeShield-Mayes walks the halls of a practice she now calls her own.
"You probably never imagine you'd be displaying these in your own practice," Meteorologist Monique Robinson asked Dr. DeShield-Mayes as they walked the halls of the practice looking at photos of Dr. DeShield-Mayes working with young kids abroad on dental mission trips.
"I did not, but bringing these gives patients a sense of who I am," Dr. DeShield-Mayes said.
Whether she's in Greensboro or doing mission work internationally, Dr. DeShield-Mayes says she loves helping people. As a first-generation Liberian-American, she says her trip to West Africa had the biggest tug on her heart.
"It felt like I was coming home," Dr. DeShield-Mayes said. "I felt like I could bring something back to where my family started."
As a child growing up in Greensboro, she says she didn't dream of dentistry, but her dad did.
"He passed away, when I was 13, from a heart attack and a stroke," Dr. DeShield-Mayes said. "That situation really drove me to make him proud. He was in a vegetative state for 9 months."
Dr. DeShield-Mayes says she was chasing a dream her dad planted in her as a child, but is still motivated today to inspire other young children.
"I never thought about being a doctor, but when he posed that to me, it always stuck and I was like 'maybe I could be a doctor,'" Dr. DeShield-Mayes said. "If you don't have that person or someone in your home saying that to you, it's great to hear it from someone that might even look like you."