The Cowboy | Shoot from the Hip

John Schneider didn't grow up out on the wide plains of Wyoming.

In fact, he was raised in the suburbs outside of Los Angeles.

Born in 1961, he went to school in Ventura County.

The high school yearbook lists him in the school band.

He played trombone.

Once he got to LA County, his colleagues at the hospital quickly noticed traits that would influence his career in the years to come, things that, depending on the context, could make him brilliant or troubling.

For the young doctors in training, County must have been a wake-up call.

The facility's a shit hole.

[laughs]

Mike Levy was a year above John.

They don't clean the walls.

They just paint the walls.

So if you're taking a chest tube out and getting blood all over the wall, somebody's- they're painting the next day.

Somebody was always painting, but the volume is beyond comprehension.

In the early '90s, LA was in the middle of one of the worst homicide epidemics in the city's history.

You save a lot of lives.

I personally used to probably take a bullet out of somebody's head every other night.

Gang members brought their wounded to County, and sometimes they thanked their doctors in unusual ways.

I was given a, a blue hat and told I would be safe [laughs] in a Crips neighborhood, not that I would ever [laughs] see if that actually worked or not.

And amid all the chaos, Schneider thrived.

This was his home turf.

He loved it, clearly, and you know, like a duck to water.

He stood out among the medical staff on the wards.

wards.He was this kind of cocky neurosurgery resident who wore cowboy boots and, you know, tight scrubs that showed off his muscles, and he knew a lot.

And more than looks, he was good with his patients.