Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings

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Cardiologist with a Big Heart: The Allen and Shelly

Dollar Saga

John Davis Cantwell

To cite this article: John Davis Cantwell (2017) Cardiologist with a Big Heart: The Allen
and Shelly Dollar Saga, Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 30:4, 478-480, DOI:
10.1080/08998280.2017.11930237

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08998280.2017.11930237

Published online: 22 Jan 2018.

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Cardiologist with a big heart: the Allen and Shelly Dollar saga
John Davis Cantwell, MD

A
llen and Shelly Dollar seemed like an ordinary couple. a b
They had first met in high school, when Allen was a
laboratory aide for Shelly’s 10th-grade biology class in
a suburb of Washington, DC. They started dating and
eventually married in 1980 and moved to Baltimore, where
Shelly began nursing school at the University of Maryland
and Allen enrolled in medical school at the same university.
Their oldest daughter, Lauren, was born during Allen’s senior
year. Shelly had to go on prolonged bedrest during the latter
stages of pregnancy and never returned to nursing, focusing
instead on becoming a full-time mother. They went on to
have two more biological daughters. With occupations as
a cardiologist and a nurse-art dealer, their financial future
was secure. Yet their lives would change in 1993, when they Figure 1. Gabby: (a) age 3, with Shelly, and (b) today.
were doing medical work in El Salvador with the nonprofit
Children’s Cross Connection and encountered Gabriella a b
(Gabby).
Gabby (Figure 1) was a 3-year-old orphan with severe
cerebral palsy and bilateral congenital hip dislocations. They
arranged for her to be transported to Atlanta to have her hips
repaired, with the full intention of returning her to El Salvador.
The Dollars grew so fond of her during her convalescence,
however, that they decided to adopt her.
At the same time the Dollars were bringing Gabby home,
they had initiated the adoption of a little boy, Jon (Figure 2a),
from China, to go with their three biological daughters.
(Shelly had been advised against further pregnancies.) Jon
was also an orphan, from the Nanjing area, and had tetralogy
of Fallot, which was becoming increasingly symptomatic.
The adoption went through and Jon had successful surgical
repair in Atlanta. Figure 2. The next three adopted children: (a) Jon, age 3, and (b) Hugo and
When Gabby and Jon were about 5 years old, Allen and Tony, ages 8 and 6.
Shelly decided that another boy in the family would be nice.
They heard of two in an orphanage in Saltillo, Mexico, and edema. Mesfin had left home to avoid being a burden on his
decided to adopt both Hugo and Tony (Figure 2b) after a 2-year coffee-farmer father, walking miles to the Mother Teresa Home.
process and five trips to Mexico. Allen arranged for him to come to Atlanta for mitral valve repair
Allen has a close friend, Rick Hodes, MD (1), an internist by Piedmont surgeon Jim Kauten. He returned home in good
who had trained at Johns Hopkins (Figure 3). For over 30 years,
Dr. Hodes has cared for the poor in Ethiopia via the American From Piedmont Heart Institute, Atlanta, Georgia.
Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Mother Teresa Corresponding author: John Davis Cantwell, MD, MACP, FACC, Piedmont Heart
Home. He told Allen about a 15-year-old boy, Mesfin (Figure 4), Institute, 275 Collier Road, NW, Suite 500, Atlanta, GA 30309 (e-mail: john.
who had postrheumatic mitral valve disease and pulmonary cantwell@piedmont.org).

478 Proc (Bayl Univ Med Cent) 2017;30(4):478–480

 Table 1. The Dollar children

Current
Child Status age Present activities
Lauren Biological 32 Staff attorney, juvenile defense,
Georgetown Law
Stephanie Biological 30 Special education teacher and
newlywed
Diane Biological 27 Commercial helicopter pilot
Gabby Adopted 27 Recently moved into her own home
with assistants (due to her cerebral
palsy)
Jon Adopted 25 Administrator at George Washington
Figure 3. Rick Hodes, MD (right) with Allen Dollar. Medical School
Hugo Adopted 27 Cook in a fast food restaurant in San
a b Antonio
Tony Adopted 25 Truck driver; single, with a 3-year-old
son, Allen
Mesfin Foster 32 Perfusionist at the Texas Heart Institute
Todd Foster 40 Vice president of a hospital in Colorado
Tesh Foster 22 Senior film major at Savannah College of
Art and Design

condition, but later developed endocarditis and returned to

Figure 4. Mesfin: (a) age 15 and (a) now, with Dr. Jim Kauten.
Figure 5. The Dollar family.
a b
Figure 6. (a) Diane with her helicopter. (b) Todd Coe with baseball star son, Toby.
Atlanta for a mechanical mitral valve procedure. Since follow-up
care for this procedure, such as anticoagulant monitoring, was
not available in his area, the Dollars took him in as a foster child.
While caring for Mesfin, friends at church told them about
Todd, a 19-year-old boy with serious drug issues who needed
a safe place to stay. He became another foster son and was able
to quit the drug habit.
Tesh, one of Mesfin’s 13 siblings from Ethiopia, was living
with Dr. Hodes and had expressed serious ambitions of becom-
ing a filmmaker. The Dollars became his foster parents as well
and enrolled him in the Savannah College of Art and Design.
The 10 Dollar children continue to do well (Table 1, Figures 5
and 6).
Dr. Hodes had rented a home in Addis Ababa, where he
looked after 10 children, aged 12 to 18, most of whom had seri-
ous medical issues that he was attending to. He was running out
of funds to keep the house going, so Allen and Shelly founded
a nonprofit organization to help care for the children (www.
makingthegrade.info). The organization focuses on education
and has evolved into the support of 60 children in seven homes
(each with an adult home manager) in four cities throughout
Ethiopia. The children and young adults, aged 5 to 25, are spon-
sored through grade school and college, and one has gone to
graduate school. The Dollars provide all housing, food, tuition,
books, and transportation, in addition to helping with job place-
ment after completion of school. Shelly is in daily contact with
the children and their house managers via e-mail and Skype.
The estimated cost per year of supporting an Ethiopian child
is $1200 to $3000.

October 2017 Cardiologist with a big heart: the Allen and Shelly Dollar saga 479
 Allen continues as chief of cardiology at Grady Memorial
Hospital (Figure 7). He recently gave up his hobby of motorcycle
riding due to concerns that too many automobile drivers were
inattentive, using their various devices while driving. Shelly
continues with her interest in art but is busy running the non-
profit organization.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Special thanks to Fred Boyer and his fine staff for preparing
the manuscript and to Stacie Waddell for doing the figures.

1. Berger M. This Is a Soul: The Mission of Rick Hodes. New York: William
Morrow, 2010.

Figure 7. Allen, chief of cardiology at Grady Memorial Hospital.

Book Review

House Call: A Doctor’s Time in
Medicine and Government by
J. Roy Rowland, MD, and Selby
McCash
Herndon, VA: Mascot Books, 2017.
320 pp., $19.95, hardback.
Reviewed by Thomas Gore, MD
the incredible risk of running for Congress against an incum-
bent. He won and was reelected five times. He had a distin-
guished career for 12 years in the US House of Representatives
from 1983 to 1995. In his autobiography, he outlines this
exciting story of his life’s work in medicine and government
service. This encompassed the time of Ronald Reagan’s presi-
dency, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the banning of Quaaludes,
the Iran/Contra affair, and many other smaller issues. As one

M
ost of us physicians
do good work on a
daily basis. With a
busy schedule every
day that we are working—and
we work a lot—most of us find
it hard to get involved in community activities. We rarely get
involved heavily in political campaigns. Most of us have not
gone to the state house or to Congress to lobby our representa-
tives on behalf of medicine. Yet we know of some physicians
who are so inclined.
J. Roy Rowland, MD, is one such person. After many
years of private practice in Dublin, Georgia, he got involved
deeply in organized medicine. He got his feet wet with an
organization called CONTROL, advocating a limit to gov-
ernment interference with medical care. He was a stalwart in
the Medical Association of Georgia. He served in the Georgia
Legislature for 6 years before retiring from practice and taking
of the few physicians in Congress at the time, he became a
respected leader when health care reform was front and center
with the Clinton presidency.
This book is a captivating story of the times, the struggles,
and the ultimate stalemate on health care reform. Just how close
he came to forging a more moderate alternative to the Clinton
plan becomes apparent to the reader. Spiced with humor and
wise perspective, this book is a great guide for physicians. How
to become more involved (the good, the bad, and the ugly)
becomes clear through his life story. It is amazing how he kept
his head on straight and maintained humility and a gentle
persistence to act for the common good. I could not put the
book down. I encourage physicians to read this newly published
300-pager. It tells a story for all time to remember about a great
man who makes us proud to say we are his fellow physicians.
We can learn much from his example.
The reviewer, Thomas B. Gore, MD, is a cardiologist in Lagrange, Georgia.

480 Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings Volume 30, Number 4