“…has a knack for connecting with people of all cultures.”
Pediatrics
Central Valley Area
Native-American family living in East Los Angeles, Felipe Dominguez, MD, developed an interest in medicine early on from helping his grandmother.
“My grandmother was a healer– we say curandera,” he said. “People would come to her and she would send me to the herb garden in the back yard to get this or that; she always made people feel better.”
It was a long way from that back-yard herb garden to Stanford Medical School where he studied medicine. “It was the turbulent late ’60s,” he said. “I decided I wanted to help people.”
At Stanford, torn between going into a family practice and pediatrics, he was moved by a dream. “In the dream, someone handed me a very sick baby. I looked down at this baby. After that, I knew I was going into pediatrics.” Today, Dr. Dominguez is president of the board of directors of El Concilio, which has for the past two years been named one of the top 25 non-profits in the country, with 14 programs helping all kinds of people, from infants to the elderly.
“Dr. Dominguez has a knack for connecting with people of all cultures,” said Chief of Pediatrics Michael Rehbein, MD. “He also takes his responsibility to community very seriously. These are wonderful attributes.”
“I always get excited about kids. Some days I’d pay to have my job.”