Suburban heart doctor's struggle inspires thousands

We look for heroes in all the wrong places.

Music videos, baseball dugouts, business board rooms, stage and screen, the anchor desk, the cockpit, the pulpit, etc.

As hard as we look and as much as we wish it, rarely do we find people and ideas worthy of our time, devotion and continued attention.

We are so consumed by our search for extraordinary people that we usually look past the inspiration of people who are at our dinner table or in our own neighborhood.

David Calandra is one of those hidden heroes. Even though the West suburban resident never set out to become an inspiration, for more than a year he has become such a figure to thousands of people.

Dave was always a lifesaver. Literally. He does heart transplants for a living and fixes faulty hearts.

I don't know how many lives he has actually saved in his career or even if he knows. If you ask him what he does, he usually just says he's in medicine.

There are lots of people walking around today because Dr. Calandra put a new heart in their chest.

Even though Dave Calandra's job and the lives he has saved qualify him for hero status - certainly as much as Johnny Depp, Beyonce and Jim Thome, - that isn't why he has become an inspiration to so many people the past year.

Calandra has become a point of light not for his doctoring, but because of the way he has been a patient.

The story began more than a year ago, when Dave went on a mission trip to Ecuador to examine and treat people who might never otherwise see a doctor. His wife, Marcie, who is a nurse, accompanied him on the Hinsdale Hospital mission along with two of their four daughters.

This kind of trip wasn't unusual for the Calandra family. They had been on similar healing missions to places many people would never go, including Ethiopia. But that's why they went.

As he usually did, to make sure he was healthy before such an undertaking, Dave said he had "an exam and lab work done. It was perfectly normal."

But when he returned home from Ecuador in early February 2007, something wasn't right. Dave told Marcie that he was overly tired and she noticed some unusual bruising on his back and unusual "nicking" under his chin after shaving.

So on Valentine's Day, after seeing his last patient, Dave had a blood workup again. That night, as he was out for Valentine's dinner with one of his daughters, he got the news: Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia.

"Marcie, this is God's plan for us. This is not a dress rehearsal, but the real thing," Dave told his wife in a conversation recounted on his Web site. "We are not going to be defined by this obstacle, but define the obstacle in respect to what God has prepared us to do. We are going to face this in his Light and His Grace! We are blessed and chosen and have already been granted a VICTORY ... no matter what the future holds. So let's move forward and love up, pray up and hug up each other!!!!"

Dave has written about his struggle, his strength and his endless faith on a Caringbridge.org Web site that connects people who are ill with those who care about them. His regular installments of the ups and downs this past year have been read by thousands of friends, colleagues, former coworkers and others they have told about the marvelous inspiration he and his family are. Nearly 90,000 visits to his Web site have been logged.

Many of the e-visitors have left messages, touching memories of healthier times, prayers and good wishes on the Web site's guest book. As Calandra has been in the fight of his life, he poses as a boxer in pictures on his Web site. His friends have nicknamed themselves "Team Davido."

Dozens of them went to visit him at the MD Anderson Hospital cancer center in Houston the past year, donating blood and bone marrow but mostly their time and presence. His wife and daughters Trish, Chelly, Coco and Ashley have been his faith healers.

And last week, after months of fevers, bleeding, bruises, weight loss, chemo, pain, infections, more chemo, bone marrow tests and life in hospital beds, the Calandras received the news they had awaited. Dave is now in complete remission for the first time in 14 months.

He is coming back home to Hinsdale.

Since Dave Calandra's own treatment and recovery the past year, he hasn't been able to transplant a heart. But for those who know him and those who have come to know him, he has transplanted something more precious in them. He has transplanted his faith.

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached at chuckgoudie@gmail.com