McGovern, the Next Generation: Roy Fajardo
When Roy Fajardo left the U.S. Air Force after seven years of active duty, rising to the rank, he walked away from a life he understood well. He had experience. Responsibility. People came to him for guidance.
“I felt like I was a master of my trade,” said Fajardo, who rose to the rank of Staff Sgt. as a missile security officer. “I was training people at various levels to be better at their job. I was mentoring troops. I was supervising them. I was writing performance reports.”
Then he enrolled in college for the first time.
“To completely just jump ship into something else, it felt like I was going into the dark,” he said.
The decision had not been part of his original plan. Fajardo expected to make a career of the Air Force. During his fifth year of service, however, two medical emergencies changed everything he imagined for his future.
His 12-year-old brother-in-law was diagnosed with aplastic anemia. As Fajardo and his wife supported him, Fajardo learned that his father had suffered a stroke and was on life support. The following year was filled with uncertainty. Ultimately, his father had to relearn how to walk and speak, and his brother-in-law eventually received a successful bone marrow transplant.
“Watching both of them recover showed me how medicine can restore not only function but also hope and quality of life,” Fajardo said.
At the time, Fajardo was nearing the end of his enlistment. He needed to quickly make a decision about what would come next.
Construction was one possibility. There was nothing wrong with that work, he said, but he kept returning to a need that had followed him through military service. He still wanted to serve.
“I needed to find something that would fulfill that kind of inner mission that I had to keep serving in some capacity,” Fajardo said.
Medicine offered another way to do that. Instead of carrying a military mission on his shoulders, he could focus on the needs of the community around him. Fajardo moved closer to his family, enrolled in college, and began working toward medical school.
The transition was much harder than simply changing jobs.
Even years later, Fajardo remembers the anxiety he felt after leaving the structure and familiarity of the Air Force. He had spent seven years knowing his role and knowing what others expected from him. In college, he was starting at the beginning.
“I had separation anxiety,” Fajardo said. “It’s a common thing with service members.”
What helped calm that anxiety was another lesson he had learned in the military: uncertainty is not a reason to stop.
“If there’s some sort of uncertainty, you just have to go face-on into that uncertainty,” he said. “Close that uncertainty and make it certain.”
College also gave Fajardo an opportunity he does not believe he would have pursued without military service. The GI Bill and other education benefits helped make school possible, while the habits he developed in the Air Force carried into the classroom.
He was no longer supervising troops or writing performance reports, but he knew how to accept responsibility, adapt, and keep moving when the next step was unfamiliar.
“I wouldn’t have gone to college without the experience of the military,” Fajardo said. “I just decided to meet them in the middle.”
His path eventually brought him to McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, where he is beginning his first year as a McGovern Scholar. That scholarship has relieved a pressure Fajardo has known for much of his life.
Growing up, he watched his parents work from sunup to sundown. As their children got older, they worked alongside them. Medical expenses could force difficult choices, even for hospital visits and routine care.
“There were times when my parents had to empty their pockets to afford hospital visits and routine checkups,” Fajardo said. “I think about those days often.”
His parents did not talk openly about money being a problem. They tried to protect their children from the extent of the strain.
“They always just worked as hard as they could and provided what they could,” Fajardo said. “They left me better off than most people.”
The financial pressure became harder to ignore once he was in college. Fajardo was trying to earn the grades needed for medical school, while also keeping up with bills.
“The stress of trying to make perfect grades, make it into medical school, and also trying to pay bills, it really became a heavy burden,” he said. “For that, I’m super grateful to be a McGovern Scholar.”
Without the same financial concern following him into medical school, he can put more of his attention toward the work in front of him.
“I feel like I can just focus on what’s important,” he said. “That’s trying to get my career in the right place and be as best of a student that I can be so I can be a better doctor.”
Fajardo remains open about where medicine will take him. Physical medicine and rehabilitation is especially meaningful because of its focus on restoring function and quality of life, but he is also interested in internal medicine, emergency medicine, and family medicine.
What matters more to him now is where he will eventually practice. Fajardo is a first-generation American and first-generation college student. Because of that, he wants to work in communities where medical care can still feel like a financial sacrifice rather than something people can rely on.
His own family’s experience has not faded simply because his circumstances have changed.
“I want to serve underserved communities and help make quality healthcare feel less like a financial sacrifice and more like something everyone can access,” he said.
The work is different from what he once imagined doing in university. The reason behind it is not. Fajardo found another way to serve.