By the time San Marcos resident Mike Lattimer ran out of work as a general contractor during the economic collapse several years ago, his health insurance was long gone.
But Lattimer was starting to notice some pain in his hip ---- a condition that eventually worsened to the point that he walked with a severe limp when he wasn't confined to his bed.
"My hip, you could hear it poppin' and grindin' as I walked," he said on Wednesday. "It was starting to get pretty bad, you know? I was telling my wife, 'We're going to have to do something quick, or I'm going to be totally incapacitated.'"
Around the same time, Vista resident Daniel Gonzales was shutting down his construction business as a tile-layer and facing several other major challenges in his life, from bankruptcy to divorce.
And hip pain.
"I thought I'd torn a muscle," explained Gonzales, a lifelong North County resident who goes by "Tyger" and runs a small cab service out of Encinitas called Tyger Taxi.
He started seeing doctors in 2007 about the pain, but it wasn't until a physician ordered an MRI that he discovered what was wrong.
"Instead of being a round sphere, it was more of an egg shape, and it was shattered," Gonzales said of the ball in his hip joint. "That's from all those years of physical labor, the pounding of surfing.
"For the last year and a half, I've been using a cane," he said.
Last Friday, a team of doctors in Los Angeles, working with a charity called Operation Walk, operated on Lattimer and Gonzales, along with five other patients. The nonprofit was founded by orthopedic surgeon Lawrence Dorr , and provides free knee and hip replacements to needy patients.
Last weekend's surgeries were performed at Good Samaritan Hospital in L.A., and as of Wednesday, both men were already on their feet again.
"You know, I'm in pretty good shape already," said Lattimer, adding that he's heard the minimum cost of a hip surgery is around $40,000, with the robotically-assisted versions like the one he had last week running up to $115,000, including hospital care.
By the time San Marcos resident Mike Lattimer ran out of work as a general contractor during the economic collapse several years ago, his health insurance was long gone. But Lattimer was starting to notice some pain in his hip ---- a condition that

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San Marcos Homeowners Insurance
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