Gilbert woman's path from surgery room to comic stage

Jun. 13—Dr. Lynette Charity has gone from putting people to sleep in the operating room to tickling their funny bones while on stage.

The 71-year-old Gilbert resident recently bested other amateur comedians in an elimination contest for "Funniest Comic in the Valley" hosted by in Ahwatukee and now moves on to the final round.

That round is at 7 p.m. July 11 at Cactus Jack's, 4747 E. Elliot Road, Ahwatukee.

"Someone asked me, 'How in the world do you go from that to that?" Charity said. "Honestly, I was feeling pretty depressed. When I turned 60, I'd been working as an anesthesiologist since I was 27.

"It was a long time and it wasn't giving me the same energy, doing the same thing over and over again — sort of got into a rut."

Charity said in her sixth decade of life, she had an epiphany — she was getting older and needed something but she was not quite sure what it was.

"I thought about it for a little bit," she said, finally recalling that a patient once remarked how funny she was.

She said she often used humor on her younger patients who "needed someone who was less stoic."

Charity bounced her idea of becoming a comedian to a career coach who advised her, "'If you want to do comedy, think of a back-up plan and make sure you can get up on stage, stare at people and not poop in your pants.'"

She hired another coach and "started going on stage when I was 60," she said.

"The first time I stood up on stage, I had to have two glasses of wine for liquid courage and did my set," Charity said. "Some of my jokes hit and some didn't. But just being on stage, I was on fire."

A couple days after her inaugural stab at comedy, Charity was back in the surgical room introducing herself when the patient asked if he didn't just see her do her act on stage.

"I put him to sleep and when he woke up, he said, 'She's good and she's funny,'" Charity recalled, adding that validation confirmed she could actually do stand-up.

To shore up her stage presence, Charity joined Toastmasters, which helps people improve their public speaking and communication skills.

"I started working with them," she said. "Someone said, 'you're a good public speaker, you should do speech contests.' I started competing and winning."

In 2014, Charity represented District 9 of Toastmasters International in competing in the semi-finals of the World Championship of Public Speaking held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She won a third-place trophy for her speech.

"I decided maybe I'll do comedy and public speaking will be something I could do professionally," she said.

She embarked on public speaking engagements, tackling serious subjects like physician burnout, suicide and depression.

"I almost died by suicide," Charity shared. "There's all that stuff that goes on behind medicine that nobody sees. I did a TED talk about it and was going to different medical groups talking about it."

With such somber subjects, Charity punched up her talks with levity.

In early 2021 during the pandemic, Charity hung up her stethoscope for good.

"What I really wanted to do is be a stand-up comic," she said.

She took her act on the road to cities, including New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. She was the headline act in Washington State, where she previously lived and practiced medicine for over 35 years.

"I got paid, which was great," she said, noting that she doesn't do it for the money. "I know I do it for my mental health and I know all the statistics about laughter and humor and (their impact on) people's lives.

"I'm doing something to elevate my mood and some people in the audience may identify with some of my stuff and it may make them feel better, too."

She sometimes wears her hospital scrubs while performing as her on-stage persona Dr. Charity. She gleans material from her years as a doctor and from her family life.

"As you know I'm an anesthesiologist," she would tell an audience. "And becoming an anesthesiologist was hard. Four years of college, four years of medical school, four years of residency training and 12 years as a slave."

The joke referenced the 2013 Hollywood movie "12 Years a Slave," based on a true story of a freeborn black man kidnapped from New York during the antebellum years and sold into slavery in the South.

Charity wasn't one as a child dreaming one day of standing in front of a mike, entertaining audiences for chuckles.

Her early years were a far cry from that spotlight.

"There was no time to be funny," she said.

Charity grew up in the segregated South and, according to an interview she gave to her alma mater, she forged her mother's signature to attend a white high school in Virginia.

"I was one of the first blacks to integrate in a white high school," Charity said. "People would throw dog poop at me."

She excelled in school and received a four-year academic scholarship to Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she double majored in biology and chemistry.

"I was accepted to Tufts (University School of Medicine) in my third year in college," Charity said.

Although she grew up in the South, she said Boston at the time was wrestling with desegregating its public schools by forced busing, which led to violent protests.

"It was scary to be black at the time even though I was in med school," she said. "I would have patients who said they didn't want me to touch them.

"But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

After her first year at Tuft's medical school, she had to do an internship and although Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center accepted her, she decided not to pay Boston rent and instead live at home in Norfolk, Virginia, where she did her internship.

That's where she met her future husband, Sid Sado, who was doing his residency.

The two dated and one year later they married and have been together for 43 years.

They have two adult children, Michael, who lives in San Francisco and works for Google and Christina, who lives in Gilbert and has a 5-year-old son, Cooper.

Charity said she doesn't test her jokes with her husband, whom she called "a nerd." He is a retired critical care physician.

"Sid doesn't get all the jokes," she explained. "It flies over his head."

For instance, early in their relationship, she took Sid to a soul food restaurant she frequented.

"I had never brought a white dude," she explained.

After they were seated, the waitress asked what they would like to eat and Sid said, the fried chicken, Charity recounted.

"I bet you want the dark meat," the waitress cheekily said.

Sid responded, "I do, yes because dark meat tastes so good."

"He didn't get it," Charity said of the exchange. "That's the way he's been."

Charity instead practices her jokes with an online Zoom community of like-minded individuals.

"We go on every day, one hour in each room working on one joke at a time, six minutes and get feedback," she said. "I've been doing that for over a year and the jokes get better."

Charity said her and Sid's families provide ample fodder for her one-woman show.

For instance, her father-in-law was a racist and tried to talk Sid out of marrying her, according to Charity.

"He had actually gotten shot by a black guy in D.C. when he and his wife had a mom-and-pop store there while my husband was going to Georgetown (University)," Charity said.

She incorporated all of that into her stand-up.

She set up for her audience at a show in LA that her Turkish husband had to talk to his dad about marrying her and that she went with him for moral support but stayed outside in the bushes listening intently to the conversation.

"Dad, I'm getting married."

"Is she Catholic?"

"No dad."

"Is she Jewish?"

"No dad."

"Thank God!"

"She's Baptist and she's black."

"Does she know who shot me?"

"Dad, that was a long time ago. She wasn't there."

"I don't understand. She's black. He was black. She should know him. You go ask her."

Charity told the audience that when she heard what her future father-in-law said she thought, "Oh, my goodness that's the most racist thing I've ever heard."

She then paused for the audience and said, "But I knew him...his name was Clarence."

Not to give her own family a pass, Charity said they, too, were "prejudiced."

"My father-in-law was not a nice man but my father had he been alive was not a nice man," Charity said. "He couldn't stand white people."

Because Charity's father was dead, Sid went to her grandfather to ask for her hand in marriage.

Her grandfather's response was, "'I don't want my granddaughter to marry no honky,'" she said, having to explain to Sid the derogatory term.

Charity said for a long time her mother opposed the two dating each other.

But "when she found out she could talk about her ailments to my husband, who was in internal medicine and then intensive care, he became blacker and blacker," Charity said. "She ended up loving him until she died.

"We have two sides of families and it's comedy gold between those two," she said. "I tell serious stuff in the form of humor. It's been cathartic for me to share some of this."

Her favorite comic is Jim Gaffigan, whom she looks to for pointers.

"I love him because he's clean," Charity said. "I look at his stuff over and over again when I'm talking about family — how can I talk about my daughter in a way that's not demeaning."

Charity said she used to like Wanda Sykes until her humor "became dirty over time."

"I'm not much into Kevin Hart or Chris Rock," she said. "I don't like men comics who demean women and call them nasty names."

Charity has no intention of slowing down any time soon on the comedy circuit.

"I don't think I've peaked yet," she said. "I have yet to do a Netflix special."

For Charity, segueing into comedy is a perfect ending to her medical profession.

"Medicine is your calling," she said. But "when I talk to people, laughter is truly the best medicine."