VIDALIA, La. &045; If anyone’s counting, it’s about 1,200 miles from Cheboygan, Mich.,

to Vidalia, La.

That’s the trip Dr. John Everett and nurses Lee Hall and Maureen Mitchell took to come help evacuees of Hurricane Katrina.

The trio, along with plentiful help from local medical personnel and third-year medical student Laura Bajor, who came in from New Jersey, is running a free medical clinic for evacuees on the bottom floor of the Concordia Parish courthouse.

The clinic, which is open from noon to 7 p.m. weekdays, saw 59 patients Monday and Everett said he expects more as word gets out and more evacuees need help. The clinic opened last week with more limited hours due to staffing limits.

On Tuesday, a steady stream of patients came into the clinic, a makeshift set of rooms on the bottom floor of the courthouse.

&uot;It’s going well. We’re trying to work with rooms that were designed to be something else, but it’s working,&uot; Everett said. &uot;It’s great that they’ve been so helpful. We have an officer assigned to help us, and we’ve had so much support from the community. I couldn’t ask for more.&uot;

Most of the patients coming into the clinic with minor injuries or other problems.

&uot;A lot of people have run out of the medicine they take,&uot; Everett said.

&uot;We’re seeing a lot of rashes from people who have walked through the water and mental problems &045; it’s tough not having a home to go back to.&uot;

Not long after the hurricane, Everett started thinking about coming down to help. He recruited some colleagues to fill in for him at his family practice clinic and began seeking some nurses to go with him.

Everett also got several thousand dollars worth of medications, most at his own expense.

For Everett, such trips are old hat, though this is the first time he’s responded to a disaster quite like this one.

&uot;I’ve taken mission trips to other countries before to do work, but this is new,&uot; Everett said. &uot;There are a lot of people up there feeling for our people down here.&uot;

Mitchell and Hall, both emergency room nurses in a hospital in Cheboygane, had short notice of the trip. After volunteering to make the trip, they didn’t find out when they would be going until two days before leaving.

&uot;I worked both days we were getting ready to leave, too,&uot; Mitchell said. &uot;But everybody pulled together. We all volunteered, but they put us on hold until they could get information from FEMA. We didn’t know what was going on until right before we left.&uot;