A few weeks ago, I met a local student for coffee.
Brandon's working on a long-form project about a quiet idea that’s been circulating for a while now: “It takes a village—but no one wants to be a villager." His work profiles people who show up anyway. Not as part of a nonprofit. Not under an LLC. Not through a church or an organization. Just neighbors helping neighbors, without a title or a business model attached.
I was honored to be included as the Tooth Fairy.
While the larger project is still in progress, I'm delighted to share this portion of the profile he created.
This is one small piece of a much larger story.
I’m waiting for my coffee date with the Tooth Fairy.
It’s the kind of meeting where you expect fanfare, or maybe a shimmer in the air. Instead, the door to Mean Cup opens and in walks Emily Hess. A rhythmic click-clack of stilettos against the tile confirms this fairy to be flightless. But her reputation does seem to precede her; before she reaches the counter, the barista looks up and smiles.
“The usual?”
Emily gives a soft, recognition-filled chuckle. “Thanks, Kate.”
Triple Americano secured. She joins me at the table, offering a warm handshake. “It’s a joy to meet you,” she says.
She sets the mug on the small table between us, slinging her briefcase onto the chairback with practiced ease while delicately lowering a tattered New York Times tote to her lap. The bag gives a familiar crinkle—slouched and softened by rainstorms, commutes, and city sidewalks. It sounds tired. It sounds alive.
I decide to ask the obvious. “So… how does someone land the Tooth Fairy job?”
She laughs. “Oh no, no, no. I’m a marketing ops consultant by day. The Tooth Fairy is just a nickname from our neighbors.”
Those neighbors? The unhoused of Lancaster City.
Her expression shifts, settling into something more serious. She explains that the mission wasn't born from whimsy, but from medical reality. She learned early on about the direct line between oral health and survival—specifically, the link between the plaque on your teeth and the plaque that blocks your arteries.
“Most people don’t realize that simply brushing daily can drastically lower the risk of heart disease,” she says, leaning in over her coffee. “Even without toothpaste, the mechanical action is effective. But there’s a catch.”
She tells me about a phone call she made to her mentor, Dr. Jeffrey Grove. This was about four years, and 5,000 toothbrushes, ago. She had just given away her first box and wanted a pro's opinion on making it an ongoing mission. But Dr. Grove offered a reality check.
“He told me the real risk was storage,” she says. “If someone doesn’t have a sanitary place to keep a toothbrush, or a sink to rinse it, you’re just re-introducing bacteria into the bloodstream. He told me that to do this safely, you’d essentially have to provide a limitless, fresh supply.”
She smiles, recalling the absurdity of the moment. “Jeff laughed and said, ‘Emily, to do that, you’d literally have to carry toothbrushes everywhere.’”
She pauses, unconsciously cradling the beloved tote in her lap.
“So I did.”
“So… that’s the magic?” I ask, pointing to the bag.
She smiles. “That’s the magic.”
Inside, there are only two things: Toothbrushes and Narcan. Tools for staying alive and staying human.
She pulls out a toothbrush, still sealed in its wrapper. “This,” she says, holding it between two fingers. “This is how I help people.”
Her tone is matter-of-fact. Not small. Not naïve.
“You want to feed the homeless? I suggest food. You want to clothe them? Start with a hat and work down. You want to end homelessness?” She gives a gentle shrug. “House people. The answers are simple, and the logistics are only as hard as we make them.”
She takes a sip of her Americano. “It’s wild, because we never treat business questions like they’re rhetorical. We’ll spend hours figuring out how to grow profits or optimize systems. No one throws their hands up and says, ‘Well, who can ever know?’ But ask how to love our neighbors and suddenly the room fills with shrugged shoulders. It’s not rhetorical. It never was.”
She says it with the ease of a mantra repeated daily: We get so overwhelmed by the idea of saving the world that we forget to care for our neighbors.
This is where the myth begins to shift; not toward fantasy, but toward action. The "Tooth Fairy" isn't just a cute nickname. It’s a cover. It’s a bit of whimsy that allows her to traffic in hard realities; dental decay, heart disease, opioid reversal without scaring people away.
And that’s when it hits you: the way it hits everyone who meets her in person. This is what a modern myth looks like. Not a fairy floating by in a shimmer of light. Not a camera-clad influencer begging others to make change.
Lancaster’s Tooth Fairy is a quiet piece of civic infrastructure disguised as a person. She’s a woman in stilettos, sipping an Americano, pulling ordinary objects out of a tired canvas bag with the conviction of someone who refuses to look away.