Her way of giving something back

BY ROBERT POLNER | NEWSDAY STAFF WRITER

March 18, 2006

Dr. Deborah A. Turner works on a patient inside her chiropractic office in Elmhurst. (Newsday photo/ Alejandra Villa / March 17, 2006)

Debbie Turner, 40, is in her 14th year as a licensed chiropractor in a Van Loon Street house that was formerly the chiropractic office of a European father-son practice that opened the year the United States entered World War II.

Turner leased a corner of the house at first, a short block from a then-tired-looking Queens Boulevard. Seven years ago, with her business going well, and the boulevard still known more for its pedestrian traffic fatalities, she purchased the entire building. Turner Chiropractic is situated on the first floor, while she rents the upstairs space to a residential tenant.

Turner grew up in the Bellerose section of Queens, and lives with her husband, a business consultant, in Garden City. Her clientele includes many immigrants with working-class aches and pains, among them nannies, construction workers, garbage haulers, waiters and cabbies -- "salt of the earth people that are one of the major reasons the world goes 'round," Turner said.

Many of her patients hail from countries where holistic care is the norm, and, since they often can speak three or four languages, provide impromptu translation for other patients. Although her practice opened during the city's tough recession days, she never doubted it would be a good decision. "I was young and didn't think I could be anything but successful," she said.

Turner said she finds Elmhurst endlessly fascinating due to its "astonishing diversity of ethnicities." She said she is encouraged, too, by the almost complete absence of vacant storefronts despite the shopping mall on the boulevard, and by the renovation of many homes and businesses.

"It feels vibrant and energetic, doesn't it? Maybe not 100 percent yet, but on its way there," she said. "I love my Elmhurst."