Grosse Pointe News

Sean Cotton, Owner • Anne Gryzenia, Publisher • Jody McVeigh, Editor In Chief • Meg Leonard, Senior Editor

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From California to Grosse Pointe — and China in betweenFree Access


When Samantha Buchanan, an active girl at heart who had taken up competitive running, was around 19 years old, she broke her leg rock climbing. She underwent surgery; pins and plates were inserted into her leg, and then the pins and plates came out. She spent quite some time on crutches. Her surgeon told her she would never be able to run again.

Samantha Buchanan recently moved to Grosse Pointe and opened Pointe Acupuncture. Courtesy photo

“That’s all I cared about in my whole life was running, along with school of course, but it was my real passion,” Buchanan said. “I am beyond stubborn and was like, ‘That guy can’t tell me that I can never run again.’”

A California native, Buchanan started seeing an acupuncturist. A few years later she was running marathons, even running for a time under Mizuno Corp.

Her acupuncturist soon became her mentor and Buchanan decided, after receiving her Bachelor of Science degree in nutrition with a minor in holistic health from San Francisco State University, she would invest in acupuncture school. She studied at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in San Francisco.

After graduating, she headed to Eastern China to further her education as a student at the Zhejiang Medical University in Hangzhou. The immersive experience — with a mixture between Western and Eastern medicine, known as integrative care — gave Buchanan a full realm of knowledge in medicine. For four months, she spent every day in the hospital from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“The schooling was pretty dense,” she said. “Those few months there in China were pretty incredible. … I probably learned more in those few months than I did in five years of schooling.”

Among incredible experiences in that time was rotator cuff surgery prevention treatment. Buchanan witnessed a doctor insert 30 needles, usually the thickness of hair but this time nail-sized, into the shoulder joint of a 45-year-old woman. With no anesthesia, the woman’s screams filled the air and the doctor set the whole apparatus on fire. There are only two known doctors in all of China who still do these treatments, according to Buchanan, but they are supposed to require no further surgery once completed.

“It’s a very, very ancient treatment and it’s like 99.9 percent effective,” Buchanan said. “I mean, it’s incredible. These people that get these treatments done require no surgery ever after. It’s so weird. She was just screaming. It was such a weird, out-of-this-world experience.”

Buchanan returned to California and built a practice with an acupuncturist whom her mother and best friend were patients of, saying they fell in “business love.” Their practice grew to hundreds of patients. Each week, she and her partner would see 150 patients each.

A hard year fell upon the Buchanan family as her father passed away, leaving her and her husband to take care of their large California property as well as her recently widowed mom’s property. After having her second child, a girl, in March 2020, she decided it might be time to move closer to family. COVID limiting travel made it so her daughter had not been introduced to Buchanan’s brother, who lived in Grosse Pointe.

The California wildfires also prompted the move. Her two brothers, one in Grosse Pointe and one in Royal Oak, told Buchanan she had to move her family to Grosse Pointe, because “it’s the best family-oriented place in all of Michigan,” they told her. “Which I agree with,” she said.

She said they didn’t even see their new home before buying, instead, just trusting her brothers.

“There’s not a single second we regret it,” she added.

With the move came finding a place to fulfill her love for acupuncture, something she said fell into place. She founded Pointe Acupuncture, which opened June 1, and has been booked since.

“I couldn’t feel more lucky to be where I’m at,” Buchanan said. “I feel like Grosse Pointe needed acupuncture so bad. … A lot of people have told me, ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’”   

Through her practice, she’s even been able to dispel misconceptions she had of the Midwest from growing up in California.

“I wasn’t super familiar with the Midwest, to be honest,” Buchanan said. “I think there’s this stigma that comes with the Midwest that people are unhealthy, for some reason. And I totally disagree with that. I don’t know if it’s because we’re in a bubble here in Grosse Pointe, but I swear, every patient I’ve had here has been so much healthier than my patients in California. …

“People are very, very healthy here,” she said. “And I think it’s because of the social life here. I think people are really connected and they have a good community. … Everybody knows everybody and I think that there is a lot of support. And I think that that goes a long way with our health.”

Buchanan marks the friendliness of the community as one of the reasons she loves living in the Park.

“I have to say that everybody has been so warm and welcoming,” she said. “California, people are more introverted there, they’re kind of to themselves. Not here. Everybody wants to know everything. They want to know my whole life story, why I’m here. … I think it’s so comforting that people will look you in the eye and have a conversation with you. I love it.”

She also remembers biking around in San Francisco as her mode of transportation and says she enjoys being able to do that again here.

As for the whole family, they seem to be taking the move rather well.

“My kids love it here,” Buchanan said. “My son is like, ‘We moved from California, but we love Michigan!’”