Victor Rodriguez: Top Vascular Surgeon Provides Lifeline for Student Success

When Victor Rodriguez, M.D. (Class of ’92, B.S., biology) was growing up in Torreon in the state of Coahuila, Mexico, a young medical student showed him and several other boys a cadaver lab. The initial shock gave way to fascination and eventually three of the boys grew up to become doctors, Rodriguez recently told a biology class at California State University, Dominguez Hills. The top vascular surgeon for Kaiser Permanente in northern California returned to his alma mater to encourage students to reach for their dreams.

“If you are interested in the medical field,” he said to the class, “there is no reason why you can’t compete with [students from] UCLA. “The reason why people do so well here is because there is more interaction with the professors. I was in an organic chemistry class here with only 30 or 40 [students]. When you compare that to [other schools] that have 200 students in a class, you learn the material better.”

Rodriguez was raised by his grandparents until he was 11, when his family moved to the United States. As an immigrant youth in California, he remembers that he was never groomed at the schools he attended for anything remotely resembling his current success.

“My [high school] counselor never told me to get ready to take the SAT,” he says. “I used to go into her office and she would say, ‘I have a great class that you’re going to love.’ She would sign me up for diesel engine mechanics, for fuel injection, brakes and body work. By the time I got out of high school, I could work on cars really well, but I knew nothing about math. They probably thought, ‘This guy’s Latino, he’s going to be a blue-collar worker.’ It wasn’t blatant, but I think I was probably being groomed [for a mechanic’s job].”

Rodriguez served in the Marine Corps as a way to pay for college, and when his duty as an airplane mechanic was over, he enrolled at Cerritos College. When he was ready to move on to a four-year university, he found the classes impacted at CSU Long Beach, and was encouraged by one of his instructors at Cerritos College to give Dominguez Hills a try. He credits the individual attention he received from his professors as vital to success in medical school and his career.

“In bigger places, when you ask for a letter of recommendation from your teacher, you don’t really have any interaction with them,” he says. “You submit [your request] to a special office that handles all that and there’s a generic letter that’s written for every one of those students. If you’re a student with a good GPA, then you’ll get a letter. They know nothing about where you came from, nothing about you.

“Dr. (Eugene) Garcia, Dr. (Thomas) Lyle, Dr. (James) Riley (former professors of chemistry) - they all wrote me great letters of recommendation because they knew me,” says Rodriguez. “Garcia guided me and told me where to apply, and was even able to get me a spot in the pre-med group over at UC Irvine. They knew where I came from and they knew where I was going.”

Rodriguez now gives back by mentoring young students and propelling them to medical school and careers in the field. While speaking to the biology class, he invited the students to attend the 24th annual conference of the Latino Medical Student Association, offering his sponsorship to the conference and his home as lodging.

“Even if you only help one [person], it makes a huge difference,” he states. “Some [doctors] practice in the communities where they came from. That’s their way of giving back to the community. My way of giving back, of going back to my roots, is by doing this type of outreach and mentoring.”

The conference, which takes place March 28 and 29 in Sacramento, is titled “Continuando la tradicion Latina: Creating New Paths to Serve our Rural and Urban Communities.” Rodriguez is supportive of the next generation of Latina/o medical professionals, saying that serving patients with a similar background leads to a more successful patient-doctor relationship.

“There’s no question about it,” he says. “You can see it in the faces of some of my patients when they come to my office. They know I’m Latino, but they don’t know [at first] if I speak their language. When they hear me speaking in their language, it’s like a huge relief. They feel more relaxed, more at ease, and we are able to establish a better rapport.

“I think the fact that I am a person of color probably allows me to deal with all types of patients,” Rodriguez continues. “Somehow because of my upbringing or my ethnic background, I’m able to get along with just about anybody and be able to talk to them and gain their confidence.”

Rodriguez has no illusions about working miracles in his profession and does not allow his patients to do so either. As a vascular surgeon in Kaiser’s South Sacramento Medical Center, he specializes in complex aortic reconstructions and peripheral arterial reconstructions.

“I do a lot of stuff that not that many people do, because of my training,” he says. “Because of that, a lot of surgeons send me those patients that nobody else wants to [operate on] and the risk of the surgeries is high. The thing that people like the most is when you’re up front and you tell them [of the risk]. My patients know well in advance what they’re getting into. And I do my best that I can to get them through the surgery. Thank God, I’m more successful than I’m not.”

Rodriguez earned his medical degree at the University of California, Davis and served his residency at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. He completed a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison, Wis., and currently has an academic appointment at UC Davis, teaching vascular surgery. He says that at 43, his age belies his expertise.

“I’m relatively young in terms of comparing me to my colleagues,” he says. “They’re all older, white-haired doctors. Patients come to my office and they’re like, ‘Wow, you look too young to be [a doctor].’ They look at me as too young to be doing the types of operations that I do. But after talking to them, they become a little more at ease. I try to make them feel comfortable in my abilities. It’s a huge empowering thing that happens when they say, ‘Okay, I trust what you’re saying. Do what you think is best.’”

- Joanie Harmon