Age: 39

Title: Orthodontist

Organization: Private practice at three locations — Ward Avenue, Kahala Mall and Mililani. Caswell shares a "waiting area and a coffee pot" on Ward Avenue with her husband, Dr. Gregg Uyeda, a periodontist who has a separate, adjoining practice.

High school: Buffalo High School in Buffalo, Mo.

College: Drury College (now Drury University), Springfield, Mo.; Northwestern University, master of science in oral biology; University of Missouri dental school.

Breakthrough job: "I always knew I wanted to be an orthodontist. My mom had braces when I was a kid, so I would go with her (on the nearly 50-mile drive from their home in Buffalo, Mo., to the orthodontist in Springfield, Mo.) and hold her hand. My mother had awful teeth. When you see the transformation, it's cool. It's just really neat. When I was in college, (the orthodontist) offered me a part-time job and I said, 'Sure.' I vacuumed and I cleaned the bathrooms and I helped with patients, some."

Little-known facts: Caswell was a cheerleader for the Drury College Panthers. Also, she didn't get braces of her own until she was an adult.

Q. Does everybody you meet look at your teeth?

A. Oh, yes. Wouldn't it be odd if you met an orthodontist who had really awful, crooked teeth?

Q. You have quite a reputation for customer service, especially for doing fun things for your younger patients, such as renting an entire theater for them at the Ward 16 Theatre (70 percent of Caswell's 900 patients are under age 18).

A. Once a year we take the kids to the movies as our thank-you back to them. We print formal, engraved invitations, and they get to bring a friend to the Ward Theatre. We just got through doing "Harry Potter." Most of our referrals come from our patients, so to be able to give them a thank-you of any kind — you can never thank them enough for sending their friends to see us.

We also have contests that are always fun, such as postcard contests, where we want to know what they did in the summer. So they send us postcards. We have all kinds of winners — who sends the most, who went the farthest, the most interesting. ... We do food drives and we just sent out a bunch of care packages for our adopt-a-platoon project.

Q. And you also take photos of your patients for them when they get their braces off?

A. Oh, yeah. It's fun for me. It's like graduation day.

Q. Why is it important to make your office a fun place for your patients?

A. Hopefully, this is one of the best parts of their day. Even though we're adjusting their teeth, we want to make this one of the best parts of their day. Mom gets a cup of coffee or a cup of tea, and the kids get to go to the back and play PlayStation2.

Q. What's the philosophy you use to run your business?

A. My staff (of nine) is really awesome. They're always putting little favorite sayings of the day up to help keep them motivated. These little things help to make us more fun. My job, as a businessperson, is to take care of these people because these people take care of my patients. I take them (the staff members) to spas, I take them out hiking, I take them out to lunches. They spend way more time with my patients as people. I know more about their teeth, but they know more about them. It's really important that they feel good and nurtured so that they can give that off when confronted with a scheduling conflict or a problem with billing.

Q. Where did that philosophy come from?