In Honor of Doc Guevara, a New Street

The idea to honor the late Dr. Roger Guevara was hatched in an unlikely place, an old-time bar by the railroad tracks named the Mugs Away Saloon.

Two friends from Mission Viejo were having a beer at the lively watering hole one day last year. John Maginnis, a city planning commissioner, and his buddy, Joe Gonzales, a hostage negotiator for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, were talking about gangs--what causes them and what communities can do to prevent them.

“We’re fortunate that we don’t have a real gang problem here,” explained Maginnis. “But we shouldn’t ignore a problem that could be coming.”

Kids need positive role models, they agreed. And Gonzales knew just the person.

Guevara was a pioneer in Mission Viejo, one of the planned community’s early residents and its very first physician specializing in obstetrics and gynecology. The son of Mexican immigrants had raised four children of his own and had delivered some 8,000 more during his 30-year practice in the same spot across from Mission Viejo High School at La Paz Road and Interstate 5.

Guevara was a devoted family man who loved to cook menudo and have friends join in on family gatherings. A “perfect neighbor,” declared Brad Gates, the retired Orange County sheriff whose wife, daughter and mother-in-law were among the good doctor’s many loyal patients.

Guevara was a modest man who was proud of his Mexican heritage and earned two Purple Hearts during the Korean War. He was committed to his church and a stickler for principle, refusing to refer women for abortions.

Just the type of person young people should look up to, agreed Maginnis. “A beacon they can look toward.”

Soon, everyone will be able to look up and see the late physician’s name on a street sign near the hospital where he worked, Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center. This week, the Mission Viejo City Council voted to change the name of El Regateo, the one-block extension of Medical Center Road north of Crown Valley Parkway in Mission Viejo.

The old name means “haggling for bargains.” The new name was chosen to convey dignity and respect: Doctor Guevara Way.

“It just threw me for a loop that they’d want to do that for Roger,” said Norma, Guevara’s wife of nearly 40 years. “He was never pretentious.”

Guevara, who died in 1998, turned out to be an especially fitting role model. His eldest son, Roger, 41, is an Orange County sheriff’s deputy assigned to the gang suppression unit.

“Everybody knew my father,” Roger told me when he stopped by briefly at his mother’s home in Rancho Santa Margarita on Wednesday. “Not just the other doctors but janitors and waiters and everybody. He treated everybody the same.”

In his remarks to the City Council on Monday before the vote on the street name, Maginnis called Guevara a hero. “Not the kind of hero that can hit a home run or throw a touchdown pass, but the kind that brings new life into the world,” he said. “The kind that recognizes the promise of a new community and sets down their roots and uses their skills to heal the sick and deliver the babies.”

Son of a Carpenter

His full name was Pedro Rogelio Guevara Duarte, son of a carpenter and descendant of illustrious ancestors on his mother’s side, including two early California governors, the state’s first native-born priest and explorer Jose Ortega, the highway’s namesake. Guevara’s family roots are included in Doris Walker’s upcoming history of the area, “Mission Viejo: The Ageless Land.”

He was born and reared in Los Angeles, where he met his wife, the former Norma Cecilia Moreno Aramburo. They married in 1958, and she helped put him through medical school, earning her “PhT--’Putting Hubby Through’ degree,” joked Norma.

During medical school, he baked pies to relax and clear his mind. She had to clean up.

He could be very stern, even gruff, she recalled.

“He was a chauvinist,” said Norma. “Everything had to be done his way. But he was also very sentimental.”

Guevara graduated from the California College of Medicine in 1964 and moved his family to Mission Viejo four years later. The sign off the highway read “Population 6,900.”

In those days, the city had few stores and services. Mass was held inside the high school gym, until Mission Viejo got a Roman Catholic church of its own.

The opening of the first McDonald’s in neighboring El Toro was a family sensation.

“I mean, that was a big thing at the time,” recalled Norma. “We packed the kids in the car and went the very first day.”

Mission Viejo now has a population of almost 100,000. Over the years, the Guevaras have lived in neighboring communities, but the doctor’s practice never moved.

In 1972, Guevara achieved a modicum of fame when he delivered the Whistler triplets, the first triple birth in south Orange County. But he found joy in the everyday birth. He delivered babies of women he had helped bring into the world. He even delivered five of his own grandchildren.

“Dad, there’s nobody that I trust more than you,” said his eldest daughter, Lisa, when her father tried to refer her to another obstetrician.

Norma admits her children seemed to favor their father.

Said Lisa: “As much as he worked, we never felt cheated. When he wasn’t at work, he was with us.”

His hobby was puttering around the house. He taught his children the value of persistence when he spent three laborious hours trying to install an old-fashioned milkshake machine in a tight space. The doctor made it fit.

Guevara didn’t play golf, but he enjoyed sending his children to golf lessons. He didn’t ride horses, but he spent time with his girls at the equestrian center. He didn’t play sports, but he cheered his children at all their football and baseball games.

He often ran into his patients at those games, picking up their babies and proclaiming, “This is one of mine.”

On July 2, 1998, three decades after moving to Mission Viejo, Guevara learned he had cancer. It was the last day he practiced medicine. Two months later, he was gone.

“He never lost his zest for delivering babies,” Norma recalled. “He just thought it was the greatest miracle.”

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesdays and Saturdays. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or by e-mail to agustin.gurza@latimes.com.