Mourning the Loss: ‘These Two Doctors Were the Best’ : Memories: Staff at UCI Medical Center remembers pair who combined medical talents with caring natures.

They had spent their lives preparing themselves to help the sick and the poor. When an opportunity to travel for that purpose arose, they seized it.

But what began as a mission of mercy ended up in a tragic accident, claiming the lives of two of Orange County’s promising and committed young surgeons.

Dr. Francis Markoe Dugan Jr., 37, and Dr. George Brauel, 34, were headed to San Blas in the Mexican state of Sinaloa to treat the poor when the small plane carrying them crashed in a remote area of Camp Pendleton, killing them and the two pilots aboard.

“These two doctors were the best. I don’t recall two others (who have gone through) our training program who had the surgical skills in combination with the warm and caring personalities they had,” said Dr. Roger Crumley, chairman of UCI Medical Center’s otolaryngology (ENT) department, where both men practiced.

“We are clearly devastated.” he said.

The day after the news that the bodies of Dugan and Brauel had been found in the wreckage of a twin-engine Piper Apache, relatives and friends mourned the “waste” of two such dedicated professionals.

Brauel, whose mother is Mexican, had been taking trips to Mexico for the last three years through LIGA International Inc., known as the Flying Doctors of Mercy. He was fluent in Spanish, and his sister, Karen Davies, said he grew to love his volunteer work.

“It made him feel good to help others,” Davies said. “I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had eventually opened his own clinic down there.”

Brauel’s enthusiasm had rubbed off on Dugan, who last week embarked on his first journey of charity to Mexico. Dugan was trying to persuade his wife and other friends and family members to go on future trips.

Crumley recruited Dugan in a national search last summer to head a UCI-affiliated otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat) program at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Long Beach. Dugan also was an assistant clinical professor at UCI Medical Center.

Dugan had a master’s degree in anatomy from the University of Maryland and a medical degree from the Medical College of Pennsylvania, and had completed his surgical internship at the Eastern Virginia School of Medicine.

He went to UCI Medical Center in July, 1989, for his surgical residency, after which he took a one-year fellowship in facial, plastic and reconstructive surgery at UC Davis.

“He was a young man in the prime of his life and prime of his career and he is just erased. I can’t think of a greater tragedy than that,” said Dr. Edward Stemmer, chief of surgery at the VA hospital.

Stemmer described Dugan as “an unbelievably dedicated individual, very devoted to his patients. Half the staff is in tears today.”

Dugan had two children--a 3-year-old son, Nicholas, and a 15-month-old daughter, Julia. His wife is expecting their third child in August.

Melissa Dugan met her future husband five years ago when she was a floor nurse at UCI Medical Center, where he was a resident. After their first date, Melissa turned him down for a second date, but he refused to listen.

“She was attracted to his cockiness and sense of humor,” said Jeanmarie Wong, Melissa Dugan’s sister. They married after eight months of dating.

Because Dugan had spent most of his adult life training as a surgeon, he wasn’t able to buy his family a house until a few months ago, Wong said.

Melissa Dugan said her husband “wanted to do good things and to excel at everything. . . . He wanted to give himself to anyone he could.” She described her husband as, “handsome, funny and genuine.”

“He was such a good husband,” she said. “I was so lucky to have him.”

While distractedly picking yellow daisies in front of her house and fighting back tears, Melissa Dugan said Tuesday that she and her husband had always been afraid of small planes.

Nonetheless, she said, her husband decided to go ahead with his plan to join Brauel on the trip to treat indigent people in San Blas, a small town 40 miles east of Los Mochis.

“I just knew when he didn’t call me . . . there was something wrong,” his wife said.

She said that in pursuing a medical career her husband was following in the footsteps of his father, a general practitioner in Baltimore.

Francis Dugan had a humorous, fun-loving side, she said. He was a “cut-up” at the all-boy Catholic high school he attended in Rhode Island, she said, and as a college student he took a year off to be a “ski bum” before focusing on medical studies.

An accomplished skier, he had just returned a week ago from a family ski outing in Squaw Valley.

Like Dugan, Brauel was described by associates as a rising medical star.

Trailing Dugan by two years in his medical training, Brauel had become chief resident and was expected to complete his residency training at UCI this year.

A native of Orange County, Brauel attended Orange Coast College and then transferred to Cal State Long Beach. In 1985, he went on to UCLA Medical School, where he graduated in the top 10% of his class.

“He’s always been a driven guy,” said Eric Brauel, his brother. “He started out studying marine biology, and then he wanted to be a dentist, but he changed his mind and decided to pursue medicine.”

A bachelor, Brauel loved to surf and travel. He wasn’t clear about what he wanted to do after his residency, several family members said, but he had expressed interest in traveling and pursuing further studies before entering private practice. He also indicated that he wanted to specialize in nasal and sinus medicine.

“He was applying for various positions overseas,” Brauel’s sister said. “This was the peak of his life.”

Crumley said that because of Brauel’s volunteer work with LIGA and at an indigent clinic in East Los Angeles, he had recommended him to receive a humanitarian award from the National Academy of Otolaryngology.

Crumley said Brauel was “a top of the line doctor” and “humanitarian to the core.”