The dental office occupies 3,850 square feet and features a spacious lobby, a couple of private offices, a conference room, eight exam/treatment rooms - not all of which are furnished yet - and separate areas for X-ray processing, dental tools sterilization and treatment-related activities.

A state-of-the-art practice equipment-wise, the office also features paperless recordkeeping and computers that communicate with one another.

"All of our charts are on the computer system, and these two computers connect," Tracy said, pointing to a computer monitor at the rear of one treatment room and a second monitor above the patient chair. "We have an intra-oral camera so we can take pictures and throw it up on this screen so we can talk to our patients about what we're doing."

"Otherwise, they can just watch TV on it," Sam added, adjusting the flat-screen monitor above the chair so a patient could watch it even when fully reclined and a doctor was working on his mouth.

Initially, the office will have two dentists, two front-office people and a couple of dental hygienists, Tracy said.

"As of right now, it's just going to be us," Sam said, indicating no present plans to add dentists to the practice.

"We've tried to do kind of an upscale office. We want to be really service-oriented, with hospitality," Tracy said.

"Where patients don't have to wait long, where they feel we know them, their families, we take care of them. They come here, they're comfortable," Sam said, finishing her sentence."

Relaxed, comfortable atmosphere
The Thomases have been in the Valley about 18 months. They have a 6-month-old son.

Tracy hails from the San Francisco Bay Area and met Sam, from Kansas City, Kan., in dental school there at the University of Pacific.

"She couldn't get her locker open one day. I hit it like the Fonz, and it opened right up," Sam said, alluding to the Happy Days TV character.

"I could get it open - I just wanted to meet him," Tracy said laughing, with a gleam in her eye.

Sam has practiced dentistry five years now, Tracy four.

"We decided to move down here and start our own place. It's so hard to do in California," Sam said, citing the expense. "I like Arizona; it's a lot more laid back."

"We've been planning this office for three or four years now," Tracy added, noting they first looked at the Chandler-Mesa area, where Sam's brother has dental practices. "But when we looked at it, the area already was developed.

"A lot of my classmates and colleagues knew a lot about Arizona and said we should check out the Goodyear area. So we were down here visiting, and we drove over here and, oh my God, it was exactly what we needed."

"We're not exactly here on the ground floor, but we're pretty close," Sam said.

They drove around looking for potential office space before settling on the Dysart Commons development, which is evolving into a dental mecca of sorts, with three other dental offices and an orthodontics office coming soon.

Dysart Dental opened Monday, looking particularly to serve "the new families that are in the area," Tracy said. "Since we're a new family here in the office, we want to service the moms and dads and all the kids. We do everything - general dentistry, cosmetics; we're going to do implants, stuff like that."

"Root canals - the only thing we don't do is braces, and we have the Dunns going in right next door," Sam said, referring to the Dunn Orthodontics office that will be opening soon across the parking lot.

A lot of medical offices can be a bit stodgy and uptight, Tracy said.

"We're not like that," she said. "Sam and I are really relaxed, joking all the time."

"We want to have a little bit more of a relaxed atmosphere," Sam said.

Dysart Dental is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, Saturday by appointment. For information about Dysart Dental, call 623-935-0500 or go online to www.dysartdental.com, which is a work in progress.

Darryl Henning can be reached by e-mail at dhenning@westvalleyview.com.

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