Twin doctors who grew up in poverty returned to their hometown to co-run an ER

If you visit the emergency room at Chippenham Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, there’s a good chance you might meet one of the Jasper twins. 

Drs. Travan and Travis Jasper are co-directors of Chippenham’s emergency department. But their story is singular, inspirational and completely improbable.

“To be here, it’s amazing,” Travis Jasper told CBS News. “And I don’t think I could have dreamt it 40-some years ago.” 

Back in their old Richmond neighborhood, the identical twins were some of the poorest children on the block.

“We had no running water,” Travan Jasper said. “We used to go and get water from like one of the parks.  And we were hungry, hungry literally and hungry for success. Because for us, that was the only way we were going to get out.”

But they didn’t know the path out until middle school.

When the twins were 12, their uncle was hospitalized at a different hospital in Richmond that no longer exists. He was an alcoholic, and his liver was failing. The boys were scared and really needed comfort. But they said the doctor was dismissive and told them their uncle was getting what he deserved. Right then and there they made a vow.

“We talked about it out in the hallway,” Travan Jasper said. They believed they could do better than their uncle’s doctor.

“And I think we have,” Travis Jasper added.

And so, motivated by that experience and the will of each other, they graduated from high school as co-valedictorians. They did their undergraduate work at Stanford and their medical school at the University of Chicago.

They finally returned to the community where they grew up to fulfill the promise they had made 40 years earlier. They both started as co-directors of the ER in April. The two reside in the same building. At work, they wear different colored scrubs, green and purple, so their colleagues and patients can tell them apart. 

Somehow, instead of being victims of their circumstances, the twins became successful because of them. They turned trauma into triumph and helplessness into healing. 

Said Travis Jasper: “I think all of the stuff that we went through, all of the negative days, made us who we are now.”