Doctor's journey takes him to El Salvador and back
After being forced to leave his home country, Jose Arturo Coto joined HHSS with the help of kind strangers in a western Nebraska town.
BY NANCY HICKS | Lincoln Journal Star
As a young doctor in El Salvador, Jose Arturo Coto sped up the career ladder.
By the time he turned 40, he was El Salvador’s general director of health, the top medical official in a country where the hospitals themselves are run by government.
Dr. Coto was an important man.
When Coto arrived at work, a staff member greeted him at the door of his office.
“Here, doctor, your cup of coffee,” the staff member would say, politely.
Just a few years later, Coto was painting houses and cleaning bean fields in western Nebraska.
Chased from his homeland by the political turmoil in the 1980s, Coto found himself living in a trailer in Dix, Neb., with no job, afraid to answer the phone because his spoken English was so poor.
Today, Coto is grateful that when he was forced to leave El Salvador. He did not land in a large city. Instead he moved to a tiny town, in a state with a small population, where a doctor from El Salvador stood out like a lone pine tree among cottonwoods, and where people helped their neighbors.
In Nebraska, aided by new friends, he had a second chance.
In 1985, Coto began working for the Nebraska Department of Health and, for several years, was a deputy director.
Newly retired, Coto is about to start the third chapter of his life: doctoring again, back in El Salvador.
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But how in the world did El Salvador’s top government medical officer get to Dix — population 229?
Coto’s stepdaughter, once an exchange student, had met and married a Nebraskan and lived in Dix. So when Coto’s wife and four children fled the political turmoil in El Salvador, they landed in Dix, in the southwestern corner of the state.
In April 1982, Coto went to Switzerland as a representative at the World Health Organization General Assembly, “where the big decisions in public health are made.”
When he returned to El Salvador from that prestigious meeting, the government of El Salvador had changed. Coto had no job and no way to protect himself from death threats.
Two weeks later, Coto was on his way to Nebraska with less than $100 and everything he could pack in two suitcases.
Though he didn’t know much about the state, Coto liked the word Nebraska. “To me it sounded like a very strong state.”
People in Dix already had found a trailer home for him and his family and helped them with expenses.
“These people were very, very supportive. When they knew I was a doctor, they wanted me to get my license. But my English was so poor. I really didn’t know how to communicate.”
“I spent about two and a half years in that trailer home. My kids were going to school. My wife was going to work. And I was learning how to do laundry and do the dishes.”
Coto could read English. But he couldn’t speak it well.
“When the phone was ringing, I didn’t answer it. And when someone was knocking at the door, I was so afraid. I didn’t want to open it.”
But he studied. He reviewed medical books, and he practiced his spoken English, listening to tapes recorded by his youngest daughter.
And he worked at the jobs available to a man with limited English.
“I was used to providing for the whole family, and here I was not.
“I was farming. I was cleaning bean fields. I was tractoring. I was painting houses. So many adventures that I went through, some very painful.”
“I was 42 when I came to this country. And it was hard, really hard, with so many changes. My family had changed the way they behaved.
“It was not bad behavior. It was different. And when I was trying to tell them what to do, they would say, ‘This is America.’”
Many people helped the Cotos.
A priest in Kimball County arranged for Coto to study for three months at a Denver monastery. The mayor gave him a pickup to use and loaned him his credit card for the trip to Denver.
Eventually, Coto passed two of the three tests required for foreign doctors who want to practice medicine in the United States.
Coto would not be a doctor in the United States, but there would be other options.
One day he answered the phone “in my very broken English.”
“Are you Dr. Coto?” the man on the phone said. “I am Dr. Greg Wright, director of the Nebraska Department of Health.”
Then-state Sen. Dennis Baack had heard about Coto, the doctor who was painting houses, from Congresswoman Virginia Smith, and had passed his story on to Wright.
And that’s how Coto gave up painting houses and began a second career in health in 1985.
His first year, Coto got a $500 bonus. Several years later, Wright appointed him a deputy director.
“He has been a wonderful resource for Nebraska, one that we wouldn’t have except for unfortunate circumstances in his country,” Wright said.
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Over the past 21 years, Coto has put together a lab test fee report that persuaded the state Legislature to provide more money; identified chlamydia as a public health issue, which led to a chlamydia prevention program; began the state cardiovascular prevention program; and helped develop the offices of minority health, rural health and epidemiology.
He helped draft a plan to create public health departments that would cover every county — now a reality.
He developed the reporting system that combines accident and hospital data, called the Crash Outcome Evaluation System. Coto has worked with the system that collects hospital discharge data.
He was part of the team that put together the smallpox plan — he was, in fact, the only person at HHSS who had ever seen smallpox.
And he helped put together’s Nebraska’s pandemic flu plan.
Before he left this summer, he put together a flu monitoring system that will give the state’s leaders a heads-up on potential flu outbreaks, said Dr. Joann Schaeffer, Nebraska’s chief medical officer.
Coto combines both wisdom and leadership, she said. He provides a thoughtful look at information and makes “recommendations based on science, as well as on what is the right thing to do.”
Plus he’s humble … and very funny, she said.
Coto looks back at his Nebraska history and counts his blessings.
“Deex,” — that’s Dix with a Spanish accent — “was a blessing. And so was spending those days all by my own in those huge, big fields.”
“Dr Wright is an angel that God put in my way.”
And now, at age 64, Coto is is going back to El Salvador.
He thinks he might be a doctor in an orphanage, though he has had inquiries from the national university and the Catholic university.
“Not that I don’t like Nebraska or the U.S. I am very grateful to the people and this country,” Coto said.
“I am a citizen. God bless America.”
But his children are grown. His dad duties done. It’s time to go back and give back.
Coto has a fantasy. He’s back in El Salvador. He has a horse. Every morning he rides off to care for people who have no doctor.
Coto says he will be doing what Nebraskans taught him.
“I learned that one of the greatest virtues of the people in this country is that you are always willing to give and help others.”
Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com.
BY NANCY HICKS | Lincoln Journal Star
As a young doctor in El Salvador, Jose Arturo Coto sped up the career ladder.
By the time he turned 40, he was El Salvador’s general director of health, the top medical official in a country where the hospitals themselves are run by government.
Dr. Coto was an important man.
When Coto arrived at work, a staff member greeted him at the door of his office.
“Here, doctor, your cup of coffee,” the staff member would say, politely.
Just a few years later, Coto was painting houses and cleaning bean fields in western Nebraska.
Chased from his homeland by the political turmoil in the 1980s, Coto found himself living in a trailer in Dix, Neb., with no job, afraid to answer the phone because his spoken English was so poor.
Today, Coto is grateful that when he was forced to leave El Salvador. He did not land in a large city. Instead he moved to a tiny town, in a state with a small population, where a doctor from El Salvador stood out like a lone pine tree among cottonwoods, and where people helped their neighbors.
In Nebraska, aided by new friends, he had a second chance.
In 1985, Coto began working for the Nebraska Department of Health and, for several years, was a deputy director.
Newly retired, Coto is about to start the third chapter of his life: doctoring again, back in El Salvador.
n n n
But how in the world did El Salvador’s top government medical officer get to Dix — population 229?
Coto’s stepdaughter, once an exchange student, had met and married a Nebraskan and lived in Dix. So when Coto’s wife and four children fled the political turmoil in El Salvador, they landed in Dix, in the southwestern corner of the state.
In April 1982, Coto went to Switzerland as a representative at the World Health Organization General Assembly, “where the big decisions in public health are made.”
When he returned to El Salvador from that prestigious meeting, the government of El Salvador had changed. Coto had no job and no way to protect himself from death threats.
Two weeks later, Coto was on his way to Nebraska with less than $100 and everything he could pack in two suitcases.
Though he didn’t know much about the state, Coto liked the word Nebraska. “To me it sounded like a very strong state.”
People in Dix already had found a trailer home for him and his family and helped them with expenses.
“These people were very, very supportive. When they knew I was a doctor, they wanted me to get my license. But my English was so poor. I really didn’t know how to communicate.”
“I spent about two and a half years in that trailer home. My kids were going to school. My wife was going to work. And I was learning how to do laundry and do the dishes.”
Coto could read English. But he couldn’t speak it well.
“When the phone was ringing, I didn’t answer it. And when someone was knocking at the door, I was so afraid. I didn’t want to open it.”
But he studied. He reviewed medical books, and he practiced his spoken English, listening to tapes recorded by his youngest daughter.
And he worked at the jobs available to a man with limited English.
“I was used to providing for the whole family, and here I was not.
“I was farming. I was cleaning bean fields. I was tractoring. I was painting houses. So many adventures that I went through, some very painful.”
“I was 42 when I came to this country. And it was hard, really hard, with so many changes. My family had changed the way they behaved.
“It was not bad behavior. It was different. And when I was trying to tell them what to do, they would say, ‘This is America.’”
Many people helped the Cotos.
A priest in Kimball County arranged for Coto to study for three months at a Denver monastery. The mayor gave him a pickup to use and loaned him his credit card for the trip to Denver.
Eventually, Coto passed two of the three tests required for foreign doctors who want to practice medicine in the United States.
Coto would not be a doctor in the United States, but there would be other options.
One day he answered the phone “in my very broken English.”
“Are you Dr. Coto?” the man on the phone said. “I am Dr. Greg Wright, director of the Nebraska Department of Health.”
Then-state Sen. Dennis Baack had heard about Coto, the doctor who was painting houses, from Congresswoman Virginia Smith, and had passed his story on to Wright.
And that’s how Coto gave up painting houses and began a second career in health in 1985.
His first year, Coto got a $500 bonus. Several years later, Wright appointed him a deputy director.
“He has been a wonderful resource for Nebraska, one that we wouldn’t have except for unfortunate circumstances in his country,” Wright said.
n n n
Over the past 21 years, Coto has put together a lab test fee report that persuaded the state Legislature to provide more money; identified chlamydia as a public health issue, which led to a chlamydia prevention program; began the state cardiovascular prevention program; and helped develop the offices of minority health, rural health and epidemiology.
He helped draft a plan to create public health departments that would cover every county — now a reality.
He developed the reporting system that combines accident and hospital data, called the Crash Outcome Evaluation System. Coto has worked with the system that collects hospital discharge data.
He was part of the team that put together the smallpox plan — he was, in fact, the only person at HHSS who had ever seen smallpox.
And he helped put together’s Nebraska’s pandemic flu plan.
Before he left this summer, he put together a flu monitoring system that will give the state’s leaders a heads-up on potential flu outbreaks, said Dr. Joann Schaeffer, Nebraska’s chief medical officer.
Coto combines both wisdom and leadership, she said. He provides a thoughtful look at information and makes “recommendations based on science, as well as on what is the right thing to do.”
Plus he’s humble … and very funny, she said.
Coto looks back at his Nebraska history and counts his blessings.
“Deex,” — that’s Dix with a Spanish accent — “was a blessing. And so was spending those days all by my own in those huge, big fields.”
“Dr Wright is an angel that God put in my way.”
And now, at age 64, Coto is is going back to El Salvador.
He thinks he might be a doctor in an orphanage, though he has had inquiries from the national university and the Catholic university.
“Not that I don’t like Nebraska or the U.S. I am very grateful to the people and this country,” Coto said.
“I am a citizen. God bless America.”
But his children are grown. His dad duties done. It’s time to go back and give back.
Coto has a fantasy. He’s back in El Salvador. He has a horse. Every morning he rides off to care for people who have no doctor.
Coto says he will be doing what Nebraskans taught him.
“I learned that one of the greatest virtues of the people in this country is that you are always willing to give and help others.”
Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com.
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