Jeffrey D. Cao, MD (LLUSM Class of 1971), was born November 17, 1944, in San Francisco, California. He knew ever since the eighth grade that he would become a physician. He eventually grew to a height of 6’ 9.” Jeff met his wife, Dieta, a student from Germany, when he was halfway through La Sierra College, and married her on August 20, 1967, several weeks before entering the Loma Linda University School of Medicine. They have two sons.
Following his graduation from Loma Linda University in 1971 he started a residency at Kettering Medical Center, Kettering, Ohio; one year in Internal Medicine and three years in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology. For his final year, he became chief Pathology resident at Loma Linda University Medical Center. In 1976, he started an additional year of residency at LLUMC in the subspecialty of hematopathology (diagnostic evaluation of blood, bone marrow, lymph nodes, spleen, etc.), and has been a member of the School of Medicine faculty ever since. Although he taught student physicians during his residency, in 1987 he started coordinating pathology courses for freshmen and sophomores, and that’s what he’s been doing mostly ever since. From 1987 to 1991 he also directed the Pathology Residency Program at LLUMC.
Over the years, Dieta and Jeff Cao have been a great encouragement to numerous student families, many times entertaining students in their home on Friday evenings. Dr. Cao especially has enjoyed the frequent contact he has had with student physicians. And the feelings of appreciation are mutual. In September 1997, while suffering from lymphoma, Dr. Cao underwent chemotherapy treatments which caused his hair to fall out. He told his students right away that he was undergoing therapy and that he was going to be “wearing a gang banger’s haircut.” To demonstrate their love and support, more than 60 freshman and sophomore students, including 10 women, received closely cropped haircuts.
Dr. Cao, now Professor of Pathology, also has enjoyed making a difference in patients’ lives. He enjoys studying sometimes obscure cases and diagnosing conditions attending physicians can use to determine therapy. Because he is a hematopathologist, he sometimes diagnoses lymphoma, a very treatable cancer, unlike carcinoma, which usually is not. Being able to diagnose a disease that’s much easier to treat is rewarding.
In 1999, Dr. Cao started directing Hematopatholgy at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans Medical Center in Loma Linda. Dr. Cao has received many awards, including the Educator of the Year from the Class of 1991, Outstanding Faculty Award from the classes of 1994, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, (Since 2002, the School of Medicine adopted a policy stating that in order to recognize other faculty, a faculty member cannot receive these awards more often than once every seven years.) He also earned the Outstanding Faculty in Basic Sciences Award from the Class of 1995, and a Certificate of Excellence in Teaching from the Class of 1997. In 1999 he received the Teacher of the Year Award by the Dean’s Office and the Walter E. Macpherson Society. He became president of the School of Medicine Alumni Association from 2005 to 2006.
Dr. Cao philosophized about the twists and turns of his career: “I’m not somebody who plans a career and then follows the course of what was planned. I just sort of go from one stone to the next stone to the next stone. It’s interesting to me where this has led me. I don’t think I could’ve planned it any better than the way it turned out.”