Rufus Pope said his route through higher education will help him take medical care where it needs to go. “It’s something that I’ve always wanted, and I didn’t always know it was achievable. I’d never had a Black doctor. Even just realizing that was something that made me reconsider my position and go to school for it,” Pope said. Pope started at Hillsborough Community College on the nursing trek. Then, his wife encouraged him to add "doctor" to his name. “I want to be what I didn’t see,” Pope said. “I want to have non-profits; I want to have urgent cares.” For all the challenges Rufus did see but could no longer stand, like poor medical care and limited options, he wanted to cut it from his community. “What I really want to do is be a surgeon. I want to go in and physically correct,” Pope said. “We don’t have enough education in terms of what’s happening in our bodies. And typically, once it does happen, it’s too late.” That’s why treatment for medicine will be induced by what Pope has lived. “It was one of the scariest things I’ve experienced: standing between my child who’s not breathing and my wife who is not responding. What do you do with that,” Pope said. MORE: https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/hillsboroughcounty/tampa-man-hcc-doctor/67-c3b69ab4-4af2-4aa8-80bd-01535201d141 ►Subscribe: https://on.wtsp.com/youtube ►Website: https://www.wtsp.com/ ►Facebook: https://facebook.com/10TampaBay ►X: https://twitter.com/10TampaBay