Surgeon General Nominee a Colorful Trauma Doctor

President Bush on Tuesday nominated an Arizona doctor with an action-hero resume to be surgeon general, traditionally the nation’s most prominent platform for addressing the public on health issues.

Named to the post was Richard Carmona, a 52-year-old Arizona trauma surgeon, part-time lawman and former Green Beret who killed a man 30 months ago in a shootout at a Tucson intersection.

In that incident, Carmona was caught in a gun battle after stopping to aid in what he thought was a traffic accident. In fact, he had stumbled onto a killer who was holding a woman hostage.

The man, who police later determined had stabbed his father to death and was on his way to kill an old girlfriend, grazed Carmona’s head with a bullet before the doctor, also a badge-carrying sheriff’s deputy, fired a single shot to kill him.

Witnesses reported that Carmona had urged the man to put down his weapon. After Carmona shot him, he tried to save his life.

It was only one in a series of tension-filled moments in the life of a self-described “high school dropout, poor Hispanic kid” who has risen to prominence from a hard-luck childhood in New York City’s Spanish Harlem.

In 1992, he helped save a man stranded on a cliff in a daring helicopter rescue that later became the basis of a made-for-television movie.

“When I first learned that Dr. Richard Carmona once dangled out of a moving helicopter, I worried that maybe he wasn’t the best guy to educate our Americans about reducing health risks,” Bush joked Tuesday at the White House ceremony.

But “that turned out to be just one of several times that Dr. Carmona risked his own life to save others,” Bush said.

At the ceremony, Bush also announced his appointment of Elias Zerhouni, a Johns Hopkins University administrator and radiologist, to head the National Institutes of Health. Both men must be confirmed by the Senate.

Bush said he has asked Carmona to focus on several public health initiatives as surgeon general, ranging from prevention of disease through healthier living to reducing alcohol and drug abuse.

But it may have been Carmona’s experience in dealing with bioterrorism preparedness issues that made his candidacy rise above other names that had been mentioned, including Bush’s personal physician, Kenneth Cooper of Dallas.

“Dr. Carmona has worked for many years in law enforcement and community preparedness, important preparation for any emergency that may come,” Bush said. “Dr. Carmona is an experienced voice to help educate Americans about the best precautions and response to the threat of bioterrorism.”

The prominence of the surgeon general, whose office oversees 5,600 commissioned public health officers, has been largely driven by the personality of the individual in the job. The post’s clout also has depended on the surgeon general’s relationship with the president who made the appointment.

C. Everett Koop went from a pediatric surgeon in Philadelphia--whose nomination by President Reagan was widely derided--to a household name and powerful voice for sex education and against smoking.

Just-departed surgeon general David Satcher had an influential role under President Clinton, who appointed him to a four-year term that began in February 1998. But Satcher was widely seen as ineffectual under the Bush administration, and critics noted his virtual absence during the public health response to the terrorist and anthrax attacks.

Carmona called his nomination as the nation’s top public health spokesman an “American dream.”

He grew up poor, born to alcoholic parents. By the 10th grade he was a problem student who had dropped out of school. Many of his childhood friends, he has said, turned to crime.

Carmona chose to enlist in the Army. He served as a medic in Vietnam, where he received a Bronze Star, the Purple Heart and Combat Medical Badge. He later became a weapon specialist with the Green Berets.

He came home to earn a high school equivalency degree and became the first in his family to go to college. He earned a bachelor’s degree and medical degree from UC San Francisco, graduating at the top of his class.

On Tuesday, speaking briefly during the ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Carmona alternated between Spanish and English. In a voice that cracked with emotion, he thanked the president for his appointment. “To where I am today, it was just nothing you could even dream about,” he said.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers scrambled to learn more about Carmona’s views on a range of issues.

If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the second Latino to serve as surgeon general. The first, Antonia Novello, a pediatric AIDS specialist who grew up in Puerto Rico, served under Bush’s father.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who chairs the Health, Education and Labor Committee, said he would promptly call hearings on the nominations of both Carmona and Zerhouni.

Carmona’s relative obscurity was reflected in Kennedy’s remarks.

Kennedy called Zerhouni, whose name had been leaked earlier this month by White House aides, a “distinguished scientist with an impressive career as a scientific administrator.”

Of Carmona, Kennedy said only: “I look forward to learning more about Dr. Carmona’s record.”

In the desert city where Carmona has lived for 17 years, his nomination to the nation’s top health-care job only added to his reputation.

He is known as a tireless worker, one of the most prominent and recognized people in Tucson. He and his wife, Diana, have four children, three of whom are adopted.

Carmona is a clinical professor at the University of Arizona and chairman and medical director of the Southern Arizona Medical System Council, a group that helps make decisions about emergency care and resources in five counties. He is also a longtime member of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team.

“He’ll bring a dimension to [the surgeon general’s] office that’s unprecedented,” said Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who first met Carmona in 1985. “He understands law enforcement, hazardous materials, bioterrorism. It’s an asset they need.”

His career in Tucson, however, has not been without setbacks.

Carmona was fired as director of the trauma center at Tucson Medical Center in 1993. In a wrongful discharge lawsuit, he argued that he was being punished for complaining about the hospital’s “illegal and unethical practices,” reportedly winning $3.9 million in a settlement.

Donald Shropshire, former chief executive of the center, told the Arizona Daily Star: “From a management standpoint, we had some difficulties. He could be difficult. But from the standpoint of dedication to his patients, I judge him very well.”

Later, he was forced to resign by local officials as head of the Pima County health care system, which was plagued by debt.

Despite such problems, he is best known in Tucson for his heroism.

In the helicopter drama, which was captured on film, Carmona was dropped on to a narrow ledge where another helicopter had crashed. Two of the three people on board were dead, but one, Glenn Velardi, was waving his arm near the wrecked chopper. Using a makeshift harness, Carmona strapped himself and Velardi to the hovering rescue helicopter, which then flew them to safety.

“If I had been in charge I would not have allowed it,” Dupnik said. “It was just too dangerous. But he just jumped into the helicopter and said ‘Let’s go get them.’ ”

The shootout occurred as Carmona was on his way to serve as the on-call medic at a University of Arizona football game. For his actions in that incident, he was named one of the nation’s Top Cops, an award sponsored by the National Assn. of Police Organizations.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Don Kester, who heads the Pima County SWAT team, characterized Carmona as a “father figure” because he has been with the Sheriff’s Department for so many years.

“They won’t find anyone who will put more hours in a project,” Kester said. “He just works the whole time. He’s a driven individual, but one of the more humble people we know.’

Carmona, a registered independent, donated $500 in 1999 to Bush’s presidential campaign, according to federal records. He had been contemplating a run for Congress from his heavily Democratic House district when the administration approached him about the surgeon general’s job, he recently told the Daily Star, but he had not decided which party he would file to represent.

Garvey and Neuman reported from Washington, Kennedy from Tucson.