Jim Arthur of Rotary Club with a patient Jim Arthur said his idea of "giving back" used to be rationing off a sliver of his paycheck. That was until he got involved with Rotary.

"I'm retired from the corporate world," the Thousand Oaks resident said. "All we had to do was give a percentage of our check to United Way. Next thing I know, I'm retired, and I'm giving polio vaccines in India. Rotary is a remarkable organization."

Arthur and his wife, Sandie, recently returned from an eightday trip to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, representing the Rotary Club of Moorpark.

The Arthurs went as part of the Operation Footprint brigade, which brings volunteer surgeons to Honduras to operate on children with clubfeet, a birth defect in which feet point inwards; those afflicted walk on their ankles or on the sides of their feet.

Peace Corps volunteers identified hundreds of children, from 2 to 13 years old, with clubfeet.

"The doctors did evaluations on more than 300 children," Arthur said. "Knowing they could only do about 30 or 40 of them—that was the hardest part."

Twentythree volunteer podiatrists from the Baja Project for Crippled Children and three volunteer nurses from El Centro, Calif., accompanied Rotarians Dr. Michael Zapf and nurse Tom Marsh to do the corrective surgeries.

Jim Arthur said the operations, performed on 43 children, were "remarkable."

"It's incredible that these doctors give their time to do this," Arthur said. "We went in to watch, and I wondered if I would be one of those people who would feel (uneasy) or faint—but no. It was such a magical thing to watch them reconstruct a foot."

The Arthurs fed the children's families and entertained the patients before and after their surgeries.

"The children are in pain when it's over, but within each day the pain is less, and it becomes just absolute joy finding out (they're better)," Arthur said. "One girl smiled and waved to me on her way into the operating room. Rather than being afraid, she was so happy."

The Arthurs were part of a group from Rotary District 5240, led by Heather Frankle of Thousand Oaks and including Dana Moldovan of Newbury Park.

In its sixth year, Operation Footprint has affected the lives of more than 200 children by providing surgeries that would cost a total of more than $5 million.

One in 1,000 babies is born with a clubfoot, but it's rarely seen in America because casts are put on the feet of newborns to correct the problem.

Because many of the small villages in Honduras don't have any medical services, children grow up with the condition, and surgery becomes necessary to restructure the foot.