SEPTEMBER 2000
GRAD WANTS TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
By Jan Pudlow
Special to the Florida State Times
As a little boy, Richard Vidal tagged along when his doctor dad did rounds at a Miami hospital. Hanging out at the nurses' station, the younger Vidal was enlisted to cheer up sick children on the pediatric cancer ward.
But it wasn't until he came to Florida State, founded the Inter-national Medical Outreach Pro-gram and organized the first trip to help poor people in Jamaica in 1999 that he knew he had doctoring in his heart, too.
"I wanted to make sure that this is what I wanted me to do, not just because my parents were encouraging me," said Vidal, 21, who graduated with honors in August.
"Going on my first mission trip, I immediately knew," Vidal recalls.
Vidal was named Florida College Student of the Year 2000, in a competition sponsored by Florida Leader magazine, SunTrust Education Loans and Publix Supermarkets.
He was nominated for the honor by FSU's Center for Civic Education and Service.
"He was looking to be active from the first day he stepped on campus," said the center's director, Bill Moeller. "He was active with our service corps, active in working with youth any way he could. To see someone take a good idea and to make it happen in such an effective way is really inspiring."
Vidal is passionate about his goal to become a doctor. He is also founding president of the American Medical Student Association, the first organization for pre-med students at FSU committed to service, their patients and diversity.
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VIDAL WITH HAITIAN CHILDREN
"I'm amazed that he can do so many things at the same time," said Biological Science Professor David Quadagno. "He works well under stress, and he never looks stressed, no matter what's going on. I think his medical missions have helped the people in those countries and have given the students who participated a wonderful opportunity that may influence their medical careers."
Vidal says he will never forget this scene from Haiti: "They brought in a little girl, her family carrying her. She was just raging and screaming. And they brought her to a back room of the clinic where I was assisting in surgery. She had spilled hot oil all over her body. And this was three days later. On top of the burn, it was infected. Just seeing her mother crying and worrying, 'Is she going to be OK?,' was so intense.
"At the end of the week, what a difference! Her legs started to heal and she could walk."
When he has his own practice, Vidal envisons practicing medicine in the United States, but breaking away three months out of the year to donate medical services to somewhere like an African village.
It's his parents - Dr. Angel and Alina Vidal - who inspired him to make every day count. When his parents were 12 years old, they fled Cuba without their families and wound up in Nebraska, growing up in an orphanage, then attending the University of Nebraska together.
"They didn't have family" Vidal says. "They didn't know the language. And they had to make it from nothing. My parents have been a very big influence growing up, seeing what they had to go through, the drive that they had they passed on to me, and, really, to all of their four children."
Before medical school in the fall of 2001, Vidal plans to squeeze in an internship at the National Institutes of Health and at least two more medical missions. He's going to El Salvador in October, and Haiti in March, and he hopes to go to Cuba.