TIJUANA -- The kidnappers who abducted Dr. Fernando Guzmán didn't plan on triggering a public health crisis. Guzmán -- blindfolded and bleeding from a bullet wound -- was supposed to be just another victim.

But the capture of the general surgeon at one of Tijuana's leading hospitals drew extraordinary attention even during a wave of drug-war violence.

Doctors at the city's main hospitals threatened to go on strike if he wasn't released. Government officials as far as Mexico City took an interest in his case.

Guzmán, his wavy white hair pinned under a blindfold, said his captors were friendly, offering him fruit, water and sandwiches in their remote safe house. "They told me, 'You're famous,' " Guzmán said.

But they were also nervous.

Thirty-six hours after they grabbed him, they let him go.

The rare display of civic outrage apparently forced organized crime to cough him up.

It could have ended there, a ray of hope in a dark season of violence.

But two weeks later, the doctor's story took a bizarre turn. Last weekend, in the aftermath of one of the city's bloodiest gun battles, organized-crime gunmen once again came to his door.

This time, they were seeking medical help.

Guzmán was thrust in the media spotlight again, perplexed at the center of a bloody gangland feud.

Guzmán's odyssey began April 15, while he was driving down the Via Rapida in his Hummer on his way to work at Regional Hospital No. 1. A leading laparoscopic surgeon, Guzmán is the public hospital's director and works nights across town at his own hospital, Clinica Guzmán.

Three cars boxed him in, and out of them jumped several heavily armed, masked men. They started wrestling the doctor into their car. When Guzmán resisted, they shot him in the left calf muscle. Guzmán fainted. He woke up in the safe house, terrified, still bleeding.

Guzmán's abduction came amid a plague of crime targeting the city's medical community. About 20 doctors have been kidnapped and dozens have received calls demanding as much as $50,000, according to the city's medical associations.

Dr. Eric Rosenberg Diaz, president of the Tijuana Medical Assn., said he believes the kidnappers simply go down the list of physicians in the Yellow Pages.

"Basta" -- enough, Rosenberg said. "We feel like sitting ducks. . . . The situation is now intolerable."

Hours after Guzmán's kidnapping, doctors' groups, fed up with authorities ignoring their concerns, told top government officials in Mexicali and Mexico City that except for emergency room visits, they would stop seeing patients.

The next night a delegation of medical professionals got a personal audience with Baja California Atty. Gen. Rommel Moreno Manjarrez, who promised action, Rosenberg said.

What happened next is unclear. But within hours, Guzmán's kidnappers were bundling him into a car. "They told me, 'You're a man of good works. We're going to free you,' " he said.

They dropped him off on a rural road and gave him 200 pesos, about $20, for a taxi back to Tijuana. He walked for two hours before he found one.