Dr. Kevin Hoppock was enjoying "Dad's Day" at his daughter's college sorority last year when he was spotted by a former patient.

"A girl was sitting near my daughter," said Hoppock, a family physician and faculty member at the KU School of Medicine-Wichita. "Her face lit up and she came running over. She was a girl that I'd seen 15 years earlier."  

What the girl's parents thought was a stiff neck when they brought her to see Hoppock turned out to be a benign but aggressive tumor in her spine. After surgery and a full recovery, her family moved away from Wichita, but she never forgot Hoppock.  

Hoppock, the Kansas Family Physician of the Year, calls this impact on someone's life "one of the most exciting parts of being a doctor."  

And he routinely has such an impact - on thousands of patients and their loved ones whom he's seen over the years. But also on the students of the KU School of Medicine-Wichita, some of whom spend their family medicine rotation with Hoppock.  

Hoppock has also had an impact on his profession, where he has held a number of leadership roles. And then there's the mark he's made on the world, where he has put his knowledge, energy and faith to work in some of the poorest places on earth.  

Twenty-three years into his practice, Hoppock is as passionate as ever. "I think if you really embrace your role as a family physician, there is no way you can be emotionally detached."  

Mentoring medicine  

Hoppock grew up in Wichita, graduated from Heights High School and did his undergraduate studies at Wichita State University. He seems to have been a young man in a hurry; he met his wife-to-be, Lori, and decided a career in medicine by the age of 15. There weren't any doctors in Hoppock's family, but he says he learned about hard work and dedication from both his parents, who were "the first generation off the farm."  

He started medical school on the Kansas City campus, transferring to the KU School of Medicine-Wichita for his last two years. The experience of learning in a community-based medical school stuck with him. "What they do in Wichita is put you in the presence of the finest physicians ... and finest people ... you could know," he said. "I was so lucky to be with family physicians, surgeons, obstetricians, internists and pediatricians, who modeled what it meant to be a physician healer."  

Hoppock has kept up the tradition, opening his office to Wichita medical students as a volunteer clinical instructor in the family medicine rotation since the early 1990s.  

"It's a mentoring relationship, as opposed to a didactic lecture," he said. "Students come and work with us for two months in that setting. They get an opportunity to recognize not only how to do the nuts and bolts of family medicine, but also what it means to be a family physician and how that integrates with life."  

'He loves what he does'  

Hoppock's message to students is that being a family physician is the greatest gig imaginable.  

Dr. Chad Schroeder of Salina, Kansas, is a former student who chose family medicine "with enthusiasm" after doing a rotation with him. Schroeder says Hoppock took the time to get to know him, taught him all he could about patient care, his general philosophy of practicing medicine, and the importance of balancing practice and personal life.  

"It is evident that he loves what he does," Schroeder said. "Caring for patients while protecting and respecting their dignity is a high calling."  

Others report similar experiences. Isaac Chambers, now a first-year resident, said Hoppock helped refine his skills, especially in the area of evaluating patients, but also inspired him to be a physician involved in his community, with meaningful relationships with his patients.  

Student Aaron Thiessen said Hoppock showed him that being a physician "is a way of life rather than simply a job."  

Melding medicine, leadership, and faith  

Hoppock is a past president of the Medical Society of Sedgwick County and Kansas Medical Society, roles where his public speaking ability and sense of humor have both been appreciated. He currently chairs the legislative committees of both organizations, seeking to influence public policy.  

"If physicians don't take an active role in protecting the profession and the patients we serve, certainly others will ... who have less altruistic motives," he said. "To join forces with leaders in the community to see where we could make a difference has been a real joy."  

He also serves on the board of Friends University and is active in Northridge Friends Church. He's been part of medical missions to the Congo, Burundi and Rwanda. In Haiti, Hoppock helped establish an orphanage building named for his mother -- Grandma Wanda's House of Hope.  

Kevin and Lori Hoppock have three children; son Taylor, 24, an accountant in Wichita; daughter Jennifer, 21, a senior at K-State studying to be a child life specialist; and daughter Catherine, 18, who's a pre-med student at Friends University.  

'The value of what we do'

Hoppock has seen medicine from a patient's point of view, as his family has faced their own medical crises.  

In 2007, Lori developed a large tumor on her throat. In 2010, doctors in Wichita operated to save their daughter from an acute abdominal condition that Hoppock said would have been fatal in many places of the world.  

But at the end of 2014, the Hoppocks were facing perhaps the gravest challenge yet. Lori was in Houston for surgery on another tumor, with Kevin by her side.  

"Being on this side of medicine has allowed me to see the value of what we do, and to realize that often healing begins before the scalpel is applied," he said.  

'Going through life with these folks'  

Hoppock's patients have been speaking to the value of what he does for years.  

In a 2008 letter to the Kansas Academy of Physicians, a woman told how Hoppock had diagnosed her husband with a brain tumor, immediately set up an appointment  with a brain surgeon for the next day (knowing the importance of time in that case), and asked if he could pray for them. As the physician monitoring her husband's medications, Hoppock scheduled him as his last patient of the day, so he could spend as much time answering questions as needed, and then helped get him to the family car. He attended the man's funeral.  

Another patient, writing a few years later, said Hoppock had delivered five of his family's eight children; in one delivery, he rushed straight from the airport to the hospital after his vacation to perform the procedure while Lori waited in the hall outside.  At the other end of the spectrum, he provided end-of-life care to the man's grandmother.  

Asked about his relationship with his patients, Hoppock sifts through the thousands of families he's cared for to come up with an example.  

"I can think of a family, I've cared for four generations," he said. "I attended grandpa's funeral, managed the wife's stroke, treated the daughter's hypertension, went deer hunting with the grandson, and managed croup in the great grandson."  

All that makes family medicine "a little different" from other types of practice, Hoppock said. "I'm going through life with these folks."