Drs. Tate share their passions for medicine and family

By Ryan Sabalow
Friday, January 25, 2008

Photo by Andreas Fuhrmann / Record Searchlight

FAMILY TIES: Dr. James Tate said he made a conscious choice to spend time with his son, Randy, as he was growing up. He’s since encouraged Randy in his efforts to become a surgeon.

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"I liked the way things turned out," James Tate said with a smile and a glance at his 30-year-old son, Randy.

Yes, there's a "doctor" before the younger Tate's name, too.

And that's where the similarities start for the 59-year-old Anderson neurosurgeon who owns Patients' Hospital of Redding and his 30-year-old, up-and-coming surgeon son.

Both men are tall, fit and carry themselves with charming confidence.

Handsome and urbane, their dark eyes greet strangers with piercing intelligence and good-natured humor.

Their life stories parallel one another.

Both were stellar athletes in high school and college.

James Tate was a football and basketball star as a student at Lincoln High School in San Diego, where he grew up.

In 1995, Randy Tate was awarded top athlete at Shasta High School in Redding for his skills in basketball, track and tennis.

And they each gave up promising athletic careers as undergraduates to pursue the higher calling of medicine.

"I didn't see myself in the NBA," James Tate said.

They've both excelled in their fields.

James Tate is a brain surgeon who works primarily out of his hospital. His son specializes in surgeries of the head and neck.

Randy Tate's skills sent him to Zimbabwe, Africa, in October.

There, he worked with Operation of Hope, a Lake Forest-based nonprofit organization that sends doctors from the United States to impoverished countries to repair faces of children born with cleft lips and palates.

Randy Tate said it was a tiring and hectic three weeks, and he performed surgeries on as many as four or five patients a day.

But the rewards of giving a new smile to a person born with a mangled face made it all worthwhile, he said.

"It was probably one of the best experiences I've had," he said. "There was this realization that this is what I got into medicine for."

James Tate was so proud of his son's work that he had his hospital's marketing staff write up a press release about the Zimbabwe trip.

"As a dad, it's just so cool," he said.

Randy Tate lives in Sacramento with his wife of three years, Ashlee, an X-ray technician, and their 1-year-old daughter, Bria.

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