One Small Voice
by Laura McGaffey
Articles originally published in "The Voice in the Desert"

Sunsites Podiatrist
Kelly Stevenson
July 2004

When I joined Dr. Kelly Stevenson on her afternoon walk in the rock-infested desert near her idyllic Dragoon home, I had to thank her for much more than the opportunity to commune with her three horses. Only three weeks previously Dr. Stevenson had first examined my left foot and prescribed treatments for plantar fasciitis, a common cause of excruciating heel pain that, for me, prior to that day, had been repeatedly aggravated when I stepped on even the smallest stone.

After ten years in practice in her home state of West Virginia, Kelly Lou Stevenson, D.P.M. recently opened her podiatric office at 403 Frontage Road, Pearce-Sunsites, at the front of Francis Jones' Cochise Self-Storage.

Kelly completed her undergraduate studies at West Liberty State College in West Virginia, with a Biology-Chemistry double major. She loved and excelled at her science laboratory work. But she realized she really wanted to work with patients rather than in research and odds were research was the only place to which a graduate degree in Biology-Chemistry was going to take her. So after talks with a beloved mentor who was a Podiatrist, she chose to move to Philadelphia to complete her graduate studies at the Temple University-affiliated Pennsylvania College of Podiatric Medicine. She spent her residency year at Mercy Hospital in Detroit, Michigan.

Dr. Stevenson is new to Sulphur Springs Valley but not to living in rural Arizona. When she spent a year volunteering her services on a Navajo reservation she fell in love with the Arizona landscape and people and upon returning to West Virginia determined to move to Arizona and set up shop permanently. In January this year she achieved her goal and moved with her beloved horses, and dog, Dakota, into temporary lodging in Sunizona and then bought her "dream trailer" in Dragoon.

The sign in Dr. Stevenson's window perfectly reflects her commitment to her patients' health - "Open Anytime - Just Call". Like her colleague, Dr. Raymond Scott, our local chiropractor, Dr. Stevenson lives locally and will open her office anytime 24/7 to help relieve the suffering of her new neighbors in Sulphur Springs Valley.