Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings October 2017 - 478

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.
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
were doing medical work in El Salvador with the nonprofit
Children's Cross Connection and encountered Gabriella
(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.
When Gabby and Jon were about 5 years old, Allen and
Shelly decided that another boy in the family would be nice.
They heard of two in an orphanage in Saltillo, Mexico, and
decided to adopt both Hugo and Tony (Figure 2b) after a 2-year
process and five trips to Mexico.
Allen has a close friend, Rick Hodes, MD (1), an internist
who had trained at Johns Hopkins (Figure 3). For over 30 years,
Dr. Hodes has cared for the poor in Ethiopia via the American
Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Mother Teresa
Home. He told Allen about a 15-year-old boy, Mesfin (Figure 4),
who had postrheumatic mitral valve disease and pulmonary

478

b

a

Figure 1. Gabby: (a) age 3, with Shelly, and (b) today.

a

b

Figure 2. The next three adopted children: (a) Jon, age 3, and (b) Hugo and
Tony, ages 8 and 6.

edema. Mesfin had left home to avoid being a burden on his
coffee-farmer father, walking miles to the Mother Teresa Home.
Allen arranged for him to come to Atlanta for mitral valve repair
by Piedmont surgeon Jim Kauten. He returned home in good
From Piedmont Heart Institute, Atlanta, Georgia.
Corresponding author: John Davis Cantwell, MD, MACP, FACC, Piedmont Heart
Institute, 275 Collier Road, NW, Suite 500, Atlanta, GA 30309 (e-mail: john.
cantwell@piedmont.org).
Proc (Bayl Univ Med Cent) 2017;30(4):478-480



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