A Surgeon’s Path From Migrant Fields to Operating Room

[struggle4progress]

A Conversation With Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
Published: May 13, 2008

At the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa has four positions. He is a neurosurgeon who teaches oncology and neurosurgery, directs a neurosurgery clinic and heads a laboratory studying brain tumors. He also performs nearly 250 brain operations a year. Twenty years ago, Dr. Quiñones-Hinojosa, now 40, was an illegal immigrant working in the vegetable fields of the Central Valley in California. He became a citizen in 1997 while at Harvard.

...I was a farm laborer in the San Joaquin Valley, seven days a week, sunup to sundown. I lived in this little trailer I paid $300 a month for. It didn’t take long to see that farm work was a dead end.

After a year of it, I moved to Stockton, where I found a job loading sulfur and fish lard onto railroad freight cars. My eyes burned from the sulfur, and my clothes smelled from fish lard, but it paid me enough so that I was able to go to night classes at San Joaquin Delta Community College. There, I met this wonderful human being, Norm Nichols, the speech and debate coach. He took me into his family and mentored me. Norm helped me apply for and get accepted to the University of California, Berkeley.

Once at Berkeley, I took a lot of math and science classes to up my G.P.A. Science and math are their own language. You didn’t need to write in perfect English to do well in them. I pulled straight A’s in science. In my senior year, someone told me to go see this guy, Hugo Mora, who helped Hispanics with science talent. I brought him my transcript and he said: “Wow! With grades like these, you should be at Harvard Medical School.” That’s how I got to Harvard. All along, I had much luck with mentors ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/science/13conv.html?em&ex=1210737600&en=f59c833966d43393&ei=5087%0A

[shireen]

1. i'm bookmarking this ... so few good stories out there

It's wonderful to hear this. Another person who I admire very much, Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer, also came to this country as an illegal immigrant. It's such a joy to see the amazing life he's built for himself and his beautiful family. He also had mentors and supporters along the way (one of them was Jada Pinkett Smith).