Alumni Spotlight: Dr. Jose Vega ’10

Baseball and Medicine.

Dr. Jose Vega ’10 has loved the game of baseball for as long as he can remember, and it remains “by far” his favorite sport. And now, Vega has the chance to combine his passion for baseball and desire to help people as one of the orthopedic surgeons for the Cleveland Guardians.

“It’s one of those things where I still can’t believe that it’s real,” said Vega, who was Padua Franciscan High School’s Class of 2010 Valedictorian. “When I tell people about it, it still feels like it’s a fairytale.”

“I just try to appreciate it every time I pull into the players lot at the stadium and go to Spring Training. I just try to take a minute and appreciate what it is and be grateful for the opportunity. None of that stuff is really ever guaranteed, but it’s definitely been a blessing.”

Long before Vega became a standout baseball player for the Bruins, and later, at Case Western Reserve University, he started his high school journey started at another Catholic institution in Cleveland.

However, after a week, Vega and his family made the decision to call Padua. That choice to transfer to Padua set Vega on a path that allowed him to compete at his best, in and out of the classroom.

“Padua was just much more of a welcoming environment from top down,” Vega said. “At the time, it was Father Ted Haag, OFM who was the President all the way through Brother Tom Carroll, OFM who was the one who actually coordinated my transfer. To the teachers, to the students, everybody was just way more welcoming, warm and friendly, and that experience carried through really the entirety of my Padua career. Ever since then, it’s always been the same, even as an alumni.”

Vega specifically credits Mrs. Kathy Crater (AP Biology) and Mrs. Rosemary Kinsworthy (AP Chemistry) as teaching his “most enjoyable” and “most challenging” classes.

Also, Padua’s Franciscan approach helped Vega understand that caring for others runs deeper than treating patients’ ailments.

Additionally, Padua had a profound impact in another way on Vega’s life. During his sophomore year, Vega met Allison Margevicius. As juniors, they began dating and have remained together ever since.

Now married, the Vegas have two children: Camila (four) and Javier (two).

“That mindset of humility, service, religion, it’s the backbone of our lives,” Vega said. “My wife teaches at a Catholic school. Our oldest is now in school, and she goes to a Catholic school. We try to be pretty active in our parish, and then, we both try to stay active at Padua, so it’s been instrumental in every aspect of our life.”

Since Vega graduated, Padua has expanded its academic offerings to students with the creation of the MedTrack® Program.

Designed to get dedicated students real-world exposure to the medical field early in their careers, the award-winning MedTrack program has produced many doctors and other medical professionals since its inception.

“Having seen what MedTrack offers, particularly the extracurricular offerings, the ExternSHOP™, the speaker circuit, the senior research project, it probably would’ve helped me figure out my priorities and my interests much sooner than I ultimately did,” Vega said.

Despite graduating before the inception of the MedTrack program, Vega found his footing quickly at Case Western Reserve University.

He majored in Spanish, and then, what would normally have been his senior year, earned a Master of Arts in Medical Ethics. From there, Vega was accepted to the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine for medical school.

That program was a mix of medical school and research with a focus on how to move the field of medicine forward. Then, Vega completed a fellowship at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, where he focused his efforts on orthopedics.

“For me, it was a very tangible way of helping people,” Vega said. “Orthopedics was probably one of the most tangible ways that I could help people. I also like to work with my hands, so it was something that was more manually challenging than maybe some of the other fields where the surgeries are maybe a lot smaller or the role for surgery is less.”

“The last piece was the patient population is really across the spectrum. You can be as focused or as broad as you want, so you can do things like hip dysplasia in little babies all the way up through joint replacements for people in their 90s, and really everything in between. It kept all those doors open for me and allowed me to specialize further rather than have to do it right out of the gate.”

At Rush University, Vega focused his studies on “Tommy John” surgery, which is a well-known ligament replacement surgery typically for baseball pitchers. However, Vega puts his skills to good use doing more than very specific surgeries.

In fact, he will be back on the sidelines for Padua football games during the fall of 2026.

By then, the new Padua Athletic Center with Cleveland Clinic Trainer’s Room will be complete, and Vega is looking forward to seeing how the upgraded facilities help the next generation of Bruins.

“I think they can be tremendously beneficial, especially when you couple top-tier facilities with really high-quality people, which is what Padua has,” Vega said. “You couple an excellent facility, which is what the new facility will be, with excellent people that have knowledge and expertise, and I think you maximize the likelihood that you can help athletes perform at the top of their potential, keep them from getting hurt, and when they do get hurt, you can treat them with cutting-edge science resources and get them back on the field as quickly and safely as possible.”

Being the sideline doctor for football is only part of the way in which Vega and his family have given back to Padua.

Although Vega did not get an opportunity to participate in the MedTrack program as a student, he recognizes its value and serves on the MedTrack Advisory Board with the goal of helping further develop a successful program.

“Padua’s like home to me, and it’s amazing that that’s the case,” Vega said. “I look back on all the things that I think have helped to make me successful up to this point in my career, and almost all of those things have some root at Padua, whether it’s a skill that I learned there or a trait that I picked up there or a person that I met there.”

“I’m trying to think of anything that I would say, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s something that I got out of my college training or my medical school training,’ but the grit, the hard work, the passion, all that stuff was really cultivated at Padua. That’s where I would give the credit to.”

Just as he did as a member of the baseball team, Knitting Club and Spanish Club, Vega hopes current students “take advantage” of any and all opportunities through Padua.

“Padua has so much to offer, and it’s not just the 8-2:29,” Vega said. “It’s so much more. It’s about the people. It’s about the friends that you make. It’s about the relationships that you develop with your teachers. It’s about the teams that you join, the experiences that you can have only by being a Padua Franciscan student.”

“I would just implore them not to view it as they have to be there by 8 a.m., and once the bell rings, they go home. Try to take advantage of everything that’s there to offer. Come early, hang out in the hallways, get breakfast in the cafeteria, get to know people, stay late, go to the football games, go to the basketball games, join a club, go on an international trip with your classmates. Just take advantage of all that stuff. You’ll never have an opportunity like that again.”