RUMFORD – Dr. Cammy R. Benton and her husband, Jaime Espinosa, want to see America before settling down near Charlotte, N.C.

“I’ve been in school for 12 years, most of that time in North Carolina,” she said. “That hasn’t allowed me much time to travel, so we are going to take this time before we settle down.”

Benton will practice at Swift River Health Care in Rumford for the next six months. The family practice physician is a 2000 graduate of the East Carolina School of Medicine in Greenville, N.C. Her summa cum laude baccalaureate degree in chemistry is from East Carolina University. Benton just completed her family practice residency at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She also spent a year in a transitional internship at Harbor Hospital in Baltimore.

Although her husband is still in North Carolina working and searching for a job near Charlotte, Benton said he plans to join her in Maine at least a couple of weekends each month. Married a little less than two years, they consider these weekends “mini-honeymoons,” she said.

The couple will explore the mountains and the coast; and, after so many years of medical schooling, Benton will take a new direction in education. She is determined to learn alpine skiing.

From Maine, Benton will move to California and Washington as a contract physician, filling in for doctors who are on vacation and family leave or at practices searching for just the right physician to join them for the long term, as Swift River is.

By the time these “tours” are over, Benton hopes her husband will have found the perfect job for him. “He has taken a back seat to my schooling for years; now I will go where he can find a good job,” she said.

Benton grew up in a small town of 500 people near Charlotte. She wants to return to that area where there will be family around. That will be especially important to her when she has children, she said. Her husband grew up in a city, so that area of North Carolina has the right mix for them, with big city amenities in Charlotte and the warmth of small towns surrounding it.

Even though she’s been devoting the last few years to becoming a physician, she has taken time for her passion of ballroom dancing. “My husband is Colombian, so salsa dancing is in his blood,” she said, “but he does other kinds with me.”

Benton is an avid reader, too, favoring fiction with an historical bent. “Alex Haley is a favorite,” she noted. “I’m also a food fanatic,” she said. “I like eating really good food.” She’s begun to learn to cook that “really good food,” too, a pastime she said her husband appreciates.

For more information about Benton or Swift River Health Care, call 369-0146.