Dr. Robert Watkins, III and IV take care of the Lakers, Rams, Clippers, and Kings. Their work is valued not only by professional athletes but also by thousands of people who fly in to see them from around the country. Dr. Watkins, IV took his time deciding to become a doctor and then more years choosing the same field of spine surgery as his father. Now at the Marina Spine Center, they’ve been operating together for 16 years, the younger...

Dr. Rosenberg chose podiatry because he saw it as being an “internist for the foot.” He was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, but decided to learn about the West by attending the University of Arizona for his undergraduate work. He moved to San Francisco where he earned his podiatric degrees from California College of Podiatric Medicine. He thought he’d try returning to the East when he did his surgical residency at St. Mary’s Hospital in Philadelphia, but soon came...

At the age of 20, a 4-ton hoist fell on Dr. Perry’s leg and only a motorcycle racing boot that he was wearing kept him from losing his leg. It took him four surgeries and six years to regain his ability to walk and run. During that time, he lost his appetite for medical school, where he had been headed, and instead sought out the field of rehabilitation at the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic (now called Southern California University...

Dr. Lerebours was born in New York, the son of a Haitian immigrant father who was an ophthalmologist. He attended Howard University for medical school and was part of the Nth Dimension, which encouraged female and minority students to go into orthopedics rather than the usual gynecology or internal medical. Keeping his finger on the pulse of progress in orthopedics, Dr. Lerebours now performs robotic total knee replacements, uses the direct superior approach for total hip replacements, and is doing...

Dr. Vokshoor was born in Tehran, Iran, where his father was a doctor. When he was nine, they moved to Virginia where he learned to do X-rays for his uncle, an orthopedic surgeon. Going to medical school, he inadvertently walked into the wrong operating room and saw a white glistening membrane in the very center of the brain. He was hooked. Instead of focusing on orthopedics, he became a neurosurgeon. Recently he realized he wanted to become a better integrative...

Sports medicine chiropractor Dennis Colonello was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada. His odyssey took him to some small towns north of Toronto before he married an American woman whose acting aspirations moved them to the Los Angeles area. He immediately got his chiropractic license and invented some successful health care products. His practice in Beverly Hills, named Peak Health offers two gyms: one a Pilates gym to help patients through acute phases of injury; the second to help bring...

As a young child, Andrew Bulczynski and his family fled from Poland to Austria as refugees. After many stops, they settled in Toronto, Canada. He first became a dentist, but later switched into orthopedic surgery. A runner and skier, he trained in Lake Tahoe then settled in Los Angeles. He felt DISC in Marina del Rey matched his own philosophy of treatment: minimally invasive surgical techniques, using the minimum procedure that would be effective, keeping surgery as a last resort....

At age 17, Tim Davis had to choose between becoming a professional water skier or a doctor. Over the past fourteen years, he’s become a premier FDA researcher who always seems to have at least two studies going. The name of his new clinic, Source Health Care and Surgery Center, explains his concept when helping patients solve complex back pain issues: There are a finite number of variables that contribute to back pain. Start ruling out the variables until you’re...

As a child, Fola May accompanied her Nigerian-American father back to West Africa and saw long lines of people with no access to medical care wait patiently for days to be seen. She decided to study the status of medicine globally as well as become an internal medicine doctor and gastroenterologist who treats specific patients. Eventually she specialized in colorectal cancer and has conducted studies that show disparities between blacks and whites in this #2 cancer killer. Blacks, especially black...

David Kulber went into plastic and reconstructive surgery because it gave him a chance to create new surgeries. He has reconstructed severely deformed mounds of flesh into functioning hands on a young boy from Africa. He started using Google Glass to teach surgeons in Mozambique to do surgery, and he created a novel technique of using meniscus (“hearty fibrocartilage”) from a cadaver to use to create new joints in the wrist and the hand. His undergraduate degree from Cal Berkeley...