Brothers Travel Same Road to Careers in Health Care

Jacob and David Chacko grew up on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, in a Rancho Palos Verdes neighborhood where the streets are named after upscale beach towns and some of their schoolmates got the keys to a new Mercedes on their 16th birthday.

In such a picturesque and posh environment, they might well have decided life should be taken easily. But the brothers shared a drive that propelled Jacob, 25, to a series of honors, duplicated by his 21-year-old brother, David.

Both were standout soccer players and high school valedictorians who won full merit scholarships to USC, where they were also in a special program that guaranteed them admission to its medical school.

Recently, they added an even loftier prize to their achievement relay: David, a USC senior, won a Marshall scholarship to study at Oxford University, following the trail blazed by Jacob, who went there on a Marshall scholarship four years ago.

The scholarship, named for former U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, is regarded as one of the highest honors in academia, approaching Rhodes scholarships in esteem. The Chackos are not the first pair of siblings to have won the Marshall, but such an occurrence is “extremely rare,” said Angus Mackay, a spokesman for the British consul general in Los Angeles.

For this academic year, 1,015 Americans applied for the 44 Marshall scholarships, which are meant to support students likely to become leaders in their fields and contribute to society. Financed by the British government, they were established in 1953 as a gesture of thanks to the people of the United States for the assistance Britain received from the Marshall Plan, under which the U.S. government helped western European nations recover after World War II. Marshall scholars study for two or three years at a British university with all expenses paid, roughly the equivalent of $30,000 a year.

Applicants, who must be U.S. citizens with a minimum college grade point average of 3.7, propose a course of study for their time in England. Finalists are interviewed by regional panels organized by British consulates in the U.S.

Jacob and David make no claims of triumphs over adversity. They know they are privileged, an awareness they say pushed them to succeed. “To be perfectly honest, I had a sense at a very young age that I had certain talents, athletically and academically,” Jacob said.

But their parents told them they were duty-bound not to slack off. They “instilled in us that if you are good at something, that means you need to continue working at it. You should never think you are so good you don’t need to practice,” Jacob said.

Jacob and David said they felt obligated to use their skills to repay a world that has been generous to them. They plan to use their Marshall experiences to build careers tackling access to health care.

Jacob, now a UCLA medical school student, used his Marshall scholarship to study the history of U.S. health care policy. He then spent a year working as a consultant in Los Angeles for McKinsey and Co. before starting medical school last fall.

David will devote his Marshall studies to comparing the health care systems of the U.S. and other nations. He expects to enroll in medical school when he returns from England in two years.

Both hope to practice medicine as well as play a role in reforming health care policy, working with the government, health care corporations or the academic or advocacy sectors.

The brothers say they did not simply heed advice from their parents, but were inspired by the examples they set. Their father, also named Jacob, owns a construction company that builds wastewater treatment and power plants. Their mother, Leela, is an emergency room doctor.

David traces his interest in medicine to a family ritual. On Friday nights throughout their childhood, the boys and their father brought dinner to the hospital where Leela worked an overnight shift. The family ate together in her office, and the boys occasionally saw their mother with patients.

Jacob said he also was moved by his mother’s actions on Saturday mornings. After working all night, Leela would come straight to the boys’ morning soccer games to cheer them on, still wearing her surgical scrubs.

The elder Chackos said they didn’t have to encourage their sons to do well. Some of it came naturally -- the parents shared their sons’ enthusiasm for academics and sports. In Kerala, India, where they lived until immigrating to the U.S. in the 1970s, Jacob was a college volleyball player and Leela was a high school sprinter and long jumper.

“We always wanted to know what they were doing at school, but we never had to compel them to study,” the elder Jacob said. Leela thinks the boys knew to try their best at school because “they saw that we worked really hard ... [and] that probably helped motivate them.”

David credits his older brother for charting a successful course for him to emulate. But Jacob said David actually improves on his accomplishments, such as earning better grades and helping to lead a volunteer program at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

David’s observations through that program, as well as volunteer work he did at hospitals in India during summer vacations, focused his interest on improving health care for those without adequate medical coverage.

At County-USC, David saw first-hand how Americans suffer. “In India, I saw patients dying of malaria and TB, which are treatable. Here, I saw people die of diabetes, which is also treatable....There are parallels,” he said.

Another USC senior, Nilay Vora of Dallas, also won a Marshall scholarship for this year. He will study human rights at the London School of Economics and Queens University in Belfast, Ireland. Vora is planning on a career in international law, specializing in human rights issues.

Among the Americans who have received the scholarship over the past half-century are U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and Nannerl Keohane, who served as president of Wellesley College and Duke University.

Breyer recently spoke at a Los Angeles event commemorating the program’s 50th anniversary. In an interview, Breyer recalled his years at Oxford on the Marshall scholarship as a period of great intellectual challenge. But he acknowledged sleeping through some lectures and recalled his friendships with British students and travels.

“The value of something like the Marshall scholarship or, I imagine, being elected to high office, lies in the experience, not simply the honor of it,” he said.