When Dr. Justin Piasecki and his wife Jill closed Harbor Plastic Surgery Center, they did not frame it as a retirement. They called it a beginning.
After decades serving the Gig Harbor community, Dr. Piasecki — a triple board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon specializing in skin cancer removal and reconstruction — and Jill have shuttered their practice to pursue full-time international medical mission work through Operation YOJ, the nonprofit organization they founded together.
"Bittersweet end of an era," Jill wrote in a Facebook announcement. "It has been an honor of a lifetime to serve our community at HPSC."
The seeds of Operation YOJ were planted years earlier, when the family was already traveling internationally to perform free cleft palate surgeries in underserved communities. It was their daughter Kate — a pre-dental student at Stanford — who pushed them to think bigger. Kate had been researching the long-term effectiveness of short-term medical mission trips, and she challenged her parents to establish something more sustainable: a nonprofit built around community-centered solutions, not one-time interventions.
Operation YOJ has since become a full family enterprise. Jill serves as President and CEO. Daughter Natalie works in fundraising and as a scrub technician on mission trips. Youngest daughter Hailey leads technology initiatives. The organization has completed missions to Ecuador, Cambodia, Mexico, and the Philippines, with additional trips already in planning.
For Dr. Piasecki, closing the practice he built means trading one form of service for another — exchanging the familiar rhythms of a community clinic for the less certain, higher-stakes work of bringing surgical care to places where it rarely reaches.
For the Piasecki family, it is simply the next chapter. More information about Operation YOJ is available at operationyoj.com.