For her 77th birthday, which is today, Alice Lundia of Suffolk got her dentures fixed.

She had hoped for a new set to replace the ones that have been cracked for about a year, but even at an event as big as the Virginia Dental Association Foundation’s Missions of Mercy — held Saturday at King’s Fork Middle School — free dentures are hard to come by.

Though she’d read about the free dental clinic in the paper, she said, she didn’t know about it in time to get signed up for the “denture lottery” that resulted in 20 or so people being fortunate enough to get an entirely new set of choppers at absolutely no cost.

Still, waiting in a chair as her current set of dentures was repaired, she said she was thrilled to be one of the 500 to 700 uninsured or underinsured patients helped during the kickoff event for the organization’s 15th anniversary.

“I think it’s a marvelous idea,” Lundia said as she looked across the 50 or so dental chairs arranged in lines across the gymnasium, where the buzz of dental tools and equipment filled the air.

“There’s a whole lot of people that need dental work done.”

In fact, since the year 2000, the Virginia MOM program has completed 71 projects, treated nearly 52,000 patients and donated dental care valued at more than $32 million, according to a fact sheet distributed at the event on Saturday.

This is the first of seven MOM events planned around the commonwealth this year, and it was the first time the organization had brought the event to Suffolk. Organizers were encouraged by the response from both patients and volunteers.

“I think we all feel we have done something good today,” said Ashley Greene, volunteer co-chair of public relations for the event and the development director at the Western Tidewater Free Clinic, one of many sponsors providing funding, volunteer help — or both — to bring the clinic to Suffolk.

More than 400 volunteers had registered to help with everything from setup to treatment to cleanup, Greene said, and King’s Fork Middle School was humming with their efforts throughout the day on Saturday.

About 250 patients were pre-screened on Friday, as equipment was being set up at the school, and another 250 were screened on a first-come, first-served basis beginning at 6:30 a.m. Saturday. Greene said all the available patient slots had been filled by 7:30 a.m.

They were there for cleanings, fillings, extractions and other procedures, and a few received Larell Dentures, “pretty much one service” per patient, according to Greene.

During a 10 a.m. photo opportunity to celebrate Missions of Mercy’s 15th anniversary, Suffolk dentist Dr. Leroy Howell took a break from his work on the “dental triage” team that was screening the patients to determine which service they would receive. His son, Dr. Ralph Howell was the Suffolk MOM dental director, and Ralph’s daughter, Dani, who is studying to become a dentist, was also on hand, making three generations of Howells from Suffolk volunteering in the effort.

But dental offices throughout the area contributed time and talent.

Dr. Stephen Murphy was on hand with about a dozen people from his Williamsburg practice, including other dentists, hygienists, assistants and administrative staff.

“It really comes back to paying back to the community,” he said of his staff’s involvement.

Murphy said he’d seen “a lot of tooth decay” Saturday morning, “a lot of teeth that have to come out.” Many of the patients he and his colleagues were seeing, he explained, “have just gone so long (without seeing a dentist), the teeth just need to be taken out.”

Fourteen-year-old Nona Towns might have avoided such a fate because of the work of dental hygienist Jennifer Fillman, a Suffolk resident who works for Dr. Greg Koontz in Franklin.

Fillman said she was excited to be volunteering at the event along with a co-worker.

But Towns, who had just stepped away from Tillman’s chair after having her teeth cleaned, was even more excited.

“This means a lot to me, because it’s been a while since I’ve been to the dentist,” she said. “I found out I was forming cavities.”