AMIGOS: How did you two become friends?

Charlie: It was serendipitous that Marvin and I found the same medical group in a rural community in northern California. I never met Marvin in AMIGOS, but he was a legend.  I met him at an AMIGOS party in Palo Alto at another friend's house.  I didn’t see him again for 12 years.  When I returned from Kenya, I went to work at the Emergency Room in Ukiah and who walks in but Marvin. That was December 1990, and the rest is history.

Marvin: Charlie joined our group, and it was easy after that. We were similar in many ways.

 

AMIGOS: How did your involvement in AMIGOS impact your life?  

Marvin: AMIGOS was a major part of the reason I became a physician and ended up working in the Emergency Room with my Spanish skills. As a public health officer, I helped build a 21,000-square-foot recreational center for the community. 

Charlie: I had no interest in health care until I went on AMIGOS.  I started my career studying architecture and realized that I so enjoyed my time with AMIGOS with health related issues that I switched my major to pre-med in my senior year at Berkeley. This path led me to medical school and into my current career.  Soon after finishing residency I spent two years working in a small rural village in Kenya on the shores of Lake Victoria. I still long to do more international health, and will after the kids are out of the house!

 

AMIGOS: What was your AMIGOS experience like?  

Charlie: My communities were all very rural and I was doing vaccination projects. I learned how to improvise and plan for the  unexpected and I learned to depend on myself.  It was a great confidence builder.

Marvin: There is nothing like doing work for others, and I learned that by participating in AMIGOS. I was part of something bigger than myself that involved teamwork and another part of the world. 

 

AMIGOS: What is your favorite AMIGOS memory?  

Charlie: I just loved my time in Bolivia.  I was a Volunteer in the Andes with one village at 13,500 feet and then had a route that took me down into the Amazon Jungle at 600 feet. The countryside was beautiful, the people were beautiful, and I felt on top of the world negotiating vaccination projects in a language that was still quite difficult for me.

 

AMIGOS: What is your family like?

Charlie: I am a happy single parent with three children. My oldest Daniel (25) is working toward his PhD in math at UC Berkeley.  Carolyn (16) and Kenneth (13) are still at home and keep me quite busy between sporting activities and school activities. I love to travel with them as a family. Our most recent trip was to Baja California.

 

AMIGOS: In what ways did your AMIGOS experience influence your career in Public Health?  

Charlie:  If it was not for my AMIGOS experience, I would probably be stuck in an architect’s office trying to decide whether to put in an arch or a gable. Instead I am running a busy emergency medicine group that is community based and devoted to the improvement of our local community’s health.

Marvin: AMIGOS gave me a broad view of Public Health with an emphasis on the less served communities that would not otherwise receive help.

 

AMIGOS: What project are you currently working on?  

Charlie: Our most recent project was to start a hospitalist program at our small rural hospital. We just completed the first six months with Marvin as one of the star providers. We plan on expanding the service through use of tele-medicine access to specialist to make our ICU a full service ICU.  In this way we can then bring in more surgical services to our community and eventually develop a Level III trauma center.

Marvin: We are working on getting health insurance for all children in the county.

 

AMIGOS: What role does AMIGOS have in your life now?  

Charlie: I feel indebted to Guy Bevil (the founder of AMIGOS) for starting this wonderful program and wish to support it in any way I can. If more of our youth could experience what we experienced as teenagers I am confident they too will become leaders in their community to improve the quality of the world as we know it.

 

AMIGOS: What is the most compelling change in the AMIGOS organization since your participation? 

Marvin: AMIGOS has grown so much since I was involved.

Charlie: The emphasis on leadership and training.  When we were Amigos, we concentrated on vaccination programs.  Now, AMIGOS has such a broad range of public health programs that allow the Volunteers to develop a whole host of skills. The change in communication with cell phones and Internet has made the third world a lot closer to us. I remember leaving Houston on the Braniff charter and thinking I was going to the other side of the world that no one else had seen. It seemed so far away in 1972.

 

AMIGOS: Are you passionate about Latin American affairs or the Spanish language? 

Marvin: I keep current on Latin American affairs. My daughter graduated with degrees in environmental science and Spanish. I use Spanish a lot in my work and visit Mexico for vacation.

Charlie: Yes, I am passionate about Latin America and the Spanish language. I am bilingual and spend much of my day speaking Spanish to my patients. I follow Latin American politics closely and have taken vacations to Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Spain in the last 10 years.

 

AMIGOS: What else stands out about your AMIGOS experience?

Charlie: I remember the day I first heard about AMIGOS. I was traveling on a ski trip with my good friend Jim Best (a former AMIGOS staffer). He was talking about his plans for his first summer with AMIGOS — the year was 1972.  It sounded like a great adventure.  The day I returned from the ski trip I made the call to Beth Abernethy to try and get into the Peninsula Chapter to join AMIGOS.  

Although I didn’t realize it then, it was the call that truly changed my life. Through AMIGOS I found a group of friends who were looking for adventure and who truly wanted to make a difference. Through my years in Latin America I found that working in the field of medicine was my passion.

Marvin: It was similar for me. Guy Bevil came and spoke at my church. I had visited Guatemala a couple of times and I thought it sounded like quite an adventure. Guy influenced my life more than anyone else. He taught me that "the purpose of life it to have a purpose." For five years, AMIGOS was my focus in life (ages 16-21).  That was a very formative time in my life.