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Great Lives from History: Latinos

James Perez

by Joseph Dewey

Mexican-born physician

Perez, a physician in Burlington, Colorado, has encouraged doctors to pursue the difficult challenges and special opportunities of practicing rural medicine.

Areas of achievement: Medicine

Early Life

Jesús James Perez (hay-SOOS jaymz PEHR-ehz) was born in Durango in the northwest Mexican state of the same name. His parents worked the cotton and wheat fields that surrounded the capital city until Perez was five, and the family, which included Perez’s younger brother Raul, migrated to California, settling in North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley. Unable to find steady work, the Perez family adopted the peripatetic life typical of migrant workers—following the crops, living at different times in Florida, then Michigan, then Ohio before settling in the remote rural farm community of Burlington, Colorado, along the Kansas border on the high plains. The town’s population of around three thousand was more than 25 percent Hispanic, reflecting Burlington’s agricultural economy. Perez’s father found steady farmwork, and his mother, who spoke only Spanish, washed dishes at a local hotel’s restaurant. Despite the community’s high percentage of Hispanics, when Perez attended public schools there was only one other Latino in his class. Acutely aware that he and his family were different, Perez made few friends, but he excelled in school, particularly in science and math. His father, who had finished only the sixth grade, preached to both his sons that education was the key to success in their adopted country.

Perez’s eventual decision to pursue medicine came when, at fifteen, his brother, who had long suffered from seizures, was diagnosed with a brain parasite by a white doctor in a Denver hospital. The doctor’s recommendation was risky brain surgery. This news was terrifying to the family, and over the next several months Perez’s father drained the family’s savings by returning to California to get a second medical opinion. The California doctors, many of them Hispanic, found evidence in Raul of a brain disorder treatable with a relatively simple regimen of medication. The misdiagnosis in Denver, the family suspected, came from the white doctors who treated minority patients with less concern. Perez was certain now that he wanted to attend medical school.

Life’s Work

Although few of his Hispanic friends even aspired to college (at the time, fewer than 10 percent of Hispanics nationwide who matriculated in college completed the four-year program), Perez was determined. In 1988, he was accepted at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Despite shuttling to Burlington on most weekends to help his family by picking up odd jobs, Perez dedicated himself to his studies and graduated four years later with a premedicine degree and Phi Beta Kappa honors. By now, Perez was married and had a son, and he faced the intimidating cost of paying for the medical school he had dreamed of attending since his brother’s crisis. Burlington was a small town and news of his dilemma spread. In a fortuitous coincidence, the town was facing its own crisis, with two of its four longtime physicians on the verge of retirement. The fact that the town relied on only four doctors to help three thousand residents was difficult enough, but the prospect of dropping to two doctors compelled the town to take drastic action. Burlington had tried in vain to recruit city doctors to relocate to this remote town. Seeing an opportunity to help one of the town’s most promising students and at the same time solve the town’s doctor shortage, the mayor brokered a deal with a local businessman, who had made millions of dollars selling farm machinery. The deal was simple: Burlington would pay for Perez’s medical school, a cost of more than $100,000, and in return Perez would agree to return to Burlington to practice for at least one full year. Perez enthusiastically agreed, and the deal was sealed with a simple handshake. Perez’s childhood friend, Sacramento Pimentel, entered into a similar deal with Burlington.

Perez completed the curriculum at the School of Medicine at the University of Colorado in Denver and his three-year residency in family medicine at the Northern Colorado Medical Center in Greeley, just south of Fort Collins. Without hesitation, Perez returned to Burlington. The unique deal he had struck with the town was the subject of numerous local news features and a profile in People magazine. Although he was bound to stay in Burlington for only one year, Perez remained, accepting a position at Kit Carson County Memorial Hospital. Perez was committed to his original ambition of giving the community of Burlington a full-time resident family practitioner and, more specifically, of providing the community’s growing Hispanic population with a reassuring medical presence. Perez tirelessly advocated the need for medical school graduates to make a similar commitment to small-town practice despite the appeal, and lucrative salaries, of urban practice. The School of Medicine at the University of Colorado featured Perez in a video extolling the importance of rural doctors, seeing in their commitment to small-town practice the satisfying reward of contributing an invaluable service to the life of the community.

Significance

James Perez enjoyed a moment of celebrity by dint of the once-in-a-lifetime deal his small town offered him as a way to realize his dream of becoming a doctor, and Perez never forgot this lucky break. He has dedicated his professional life to promoting the often grueling regimen of being a “country doctor,” that particularly nineteenth century-sounding phrase a reminder of a career choice whose importance is routinely overlooked by a progressively more urban-oriented twenty-first century culture. By bringing current expertise and cutting-edge technology to the rural health care system, Perez has served as a reminder for a new generation of doctors of the continuing importance of that commitment.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Dewey, Joseph. "James Perez." Great Lives from History: Latinos, edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera, Salem Press, 2012. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLL_10013240047101001.

APA 7th

Dewey, J. (2012). James Perez. In C. Tafolla & M. P. Cotera (Eds.), Great Lives from History: Latinos. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.

CMOS 17th

Dewey, Joseph. "James Perez." Edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera. Great Lives from History: Latinos. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2012. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.

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