Hilda Sadigh Harouni

Hilda Sadigh Harouni, RDH

What makes me love dental hygiene? The honest answer is people.

For more than thirty years, I have had the privilege of sitting across from someone for an hour and getting to know them. Everyone who sits in my chair has a story. I have learned to listen to it. Over the years that listening became the part of the job I cannot imagine living without. The scaling and the polishing I could do in my sleep. The connection is why I come to work.

I have practiced in New York, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Diego. Early in my time in San Diego, I joined an office where one hygienist had cared for the same patients for decades. Most of them did not want me. One man nearly walked out when he saw I was not the person he expected. I talked him into staying. He spent the appointment telling me I was hurting him and that he was too sensitive. He was a heavy smoker with significant staining, so I asked a colleague for help and gave him the most thorough cleaning I could. None of us thought he would come back. Three months later he found me at my new office, half an hour north. He apologized. He told me it was the best cleaning he had ever had. He is still my patient today. That is what this profession teaches you. Show up with care, even for the people who make it hard, and trust that it matters.

I thought I understood what it meant to love this work. Then everything changed.

On February 29, 2024, my son, Dr. Benjamin Harouni, was shot and killed at his dental office in El Cajon by a former patient. He had turned 28 the week before. He was a dentist like his father, practicing alongside him. He was kind and brilliant and he believed a smile could change a life. He had millions of smiles left to make.

When you lose a child, the will to keep going can feel almost gone. People ask if it gets better. I tell them the truth. It gets harder as the time passes. What saved me was something Benjamin had handed me just days before he died.

He had called me, excited, to tell me about a floss he was developing. He had chosen a soft, pre-expanded fiber that would be gentle on sensitive gums, and he wanted to infuse it with xylitol, hydroxyapatite, and vitamin E to help with decay, sensitivity, and gum health. He called it LuvLine. He wanted people to fall in love with flossing.

He never saw it finished. So my husband and I finished it for him. LuvLine Floss is now real. It is PFAS-free, made with the ingredients he chose, in the aromas he would have loved. We have donated it to dental clinics in twelve states. Every single floss sold sends one dollar to Hearts

Over Hate, the nonprofit our family built in Benjamin’s honor to support families impacted by violent crime and to teach young people that kindness is the antidote to hate.

With each floss sold, we are not only helping victims—we are also spreading love and kindness through our messages of love and thoughtful gifts. These small gestures carry forward the connection I have and Benjamin had with his patients, helping people feel cared for beyond the dental chair.

On the anniversary of his passing, we hold a free dental clinic for people with no insurance and no access to care. Exams, cleanings, extractions, dentures. The kind of day Benjamin would have spent his birthday doing.

For me, being a dental hygienist advocating for something I believe in is healing. It is feeling his love in my hands every day. I did not expect my career to become the thing that kept me alive. But that is what dental hygiene is. It is thirty five years of patients who trusted me. It is one difficult man who came back to apologize. And it is a mother carrying her son’s dream the rest of the way, one floss at a time, so that fewer families ever have to know this grief.

That is what makes me love this work. It gave me a reason to keep going.