SAN ANTONIO – Blessed is how Dr. Jocelyn Juarez and her sister, Dr. Ericka Gullion, said they describe their lives.
After almost a decade of being separated professionally by their residencies in Harlingen and Birmingham, Alabama, both are now internal medicine physicians with the Baptist Health System in San Antonio.
Juarez is practicing medicine at Baptist Medical Center downtown and Gullion at Northeast Baptist Hospital.
How they realized their shared dream of becoming physicians began along the border.
"I always said I wanted to be a doctor, even though I didn't know what it meant," Juarez said.
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That is, until her father, an educator and business owner in Nuevo Laredo, and her mother volunteered at a small church led by a surgeon and a pediatrician.
As a little girl, Juarez said she saw how they helped people "spiritually but also medically" in a poor community.
"That was probably my biggest inspiration," she said.
Gullion's inspiration came during a mission trip to the border when she was in high school.
Gullion said she already liked science, so when she saw a doctor on the trip helping patients, she told herself, "I want to be like him in the future."
She said that's why their parents, Pedro and Laura Campos, moved to San Antonio, where they often visited as a family.
But by emigrating to the United States, the siblings said their parents gave up everything they'd known and achieved so their two daughters could pursue their dreams of helping others.
Not fluent in English at first, they each went on to earn several scholarships, graduated from UTSA and the UT Health Long Medical School.
Courtesy: Dr. Jocelyn Juarez and Dr. Ericka Gullion
"We were always there for each other," Juarez said. "Even now, when we have a challenging patient, we always consult each other."
They each have a little boy, and the boys are very close.
"They'll be buddies growing up," Gullion said. "They're always together."
Much like their mothers, then and now.