JONESPORT — A Washington County clinic is home to some of the most up-to-date dental technology in Maine, thanks to a California couple’s decision to swing through Jonesport on their way back from Canada last fall.

When Harvey Holste and his wife, Marjorie, learned in casual conversation that the town was looking for a dentist to staff the newly constructed Arnold Memorial Medical Center, everything clicked.

Holste said he had been visiting the state for 20 years and was scheduled to look at a dental practice that was for sale in southern Maine. Once he and his wife saw Jonesport, the decision was made, he said.

The couple returned to California only long enough to sell their home and Holste’s 31-year-old practice in Newport Beach.

“We got back to California in mid-October and we closed on the house January 6,” Holste said. “The moving van came on January 7.”

At the end of June, Holste opened Jonesport Family Dentistry, the latest addition to Arnold Memorial Medical Clinic.

For Paul Hauser and the other community volunteers who raised more than $400,000 to construct the medical facility, Holste’s decision to move to Jonesport was an unbelievable stroke of luck.

“We’d just finished the upstairs and we’d left this downstairs space open in hopes of finding a dentist,” Hauser said. “I’d been thinking of going to Tufts to recruit a dentist and looking for grant money to help furnish the office.”

Holste furnished his new office himself.

His four examining rooms each have a computer and are equipped for digital radiology.

Holste can place a sensor in a patient’s mouth and, within 2 seconds, an X-ray appears on the computer screen. The technology eliminates approximately 75 percent of the radiation emitted by traditional X-rays and there are no chemicals to dispose of, he said.

The image is stored on magnetic tape. Using special software, Holste can modify or enhance it, and he can print the X-ray on his laser printer.

Of Maine’s nearly 600 dentists, approximately two dozen have digital radiology equipment, according to Herb Olsen, president of Med-Dent Service Corp. in Falmouth.

Med-Dent is one of three dental supply companies that sell the equipment in the state. Although a Bangor dentist was one of the first to invest in the technology, most digital radiography machines are in southern Maine, Olsen said.

Holste said he would like to have a panoramic machine, which rotates around a patient’s head and displays the complete mouth.

“A panoramic machine is a wonderful screening tool and we have an area here where the populace has been underserved,” he said. “I’ve seen some very suspicious soft tissue lesions.”

The fact that Jonesport and surrounding towns were medically underserved is what led Hauser and the Arnold Memorial Medical Building Society Inc. to begin raising money for a clinic in the early 1990s.

“We built a building because we knew it was the only way to get physicians to come here,” said Dwight Alley, one of eight members of the society.

After raising more than $400,000 — some of it by way of a Community Development Block Grant and a foundation grant — Arnold Memorial moved into the new 4,500-square-foot facility off Route 187. Before last fall, the clinic was housed in a 100-year-old two-story Victorian on Jonesport’s Main Street.

The new facility has a large waiting room, seven examining rooms, a conference room, lab, library, an X-ray room, nursing station and physician offices.

The clinic serves Jonesport, Beals, Addison, Columbia Falls and Jonesboro.

Arnold Memorial is hooked by computer to Down East Community Hospital in Machias and the Regional Medical Center in Lubec. Telemedicine, as it is called, allows physicians in all three facilities to confer with each other, Hauser said.

The new clinic sits on an 11-acre parcel adjoining Jonesport-Beals High School. The building is handicapped-accessible and has on-site parking — two necessities that weren’t available on Main Street.

The building society rents a portion of the lower level to Holste and the upper level to Dr. Steven Weisberger, the medical director of Arnold Memorial.

Weisberger came to Jonesport 15 years ago to work off a scholarship from the National Health Service Corp. When his four-year commitment was up, Weisberger said, he saw no reason to leave.

In addition to nurses, Weisberger’s staff includes a second physician, a physician assistant and a nurse practitioner.

“It is such a nice building that recruitment has been a lot easier,” Weisberger said.

Arnold Memorial is a primary care facility and has approximately 14,000 patient visits per year, he said.

“We take people from outside, but three-quarters of our patients live within the service area,” he said.

Holste will also see people from outside the area and said patients have begun making appointments from throughout the county. He is looking for a dental hygienist and said he had no responses to a previous advertisement.

He and his wife have settled into Jonesport. Holste said he used to feel homesick for Maine when he returned to California each year.

Meanwhile, the building society is beginning its new project: raising money to install air conditioning in the clinic. It is looking for sponsors for a benefit golf tournament Sept. 25 at the Great Cove Golf Course. For information, call 497-3429 or 497-2643.