Willie Hornberger traveled back and forth between Maryland and Texas 25 years ago when his mother was terminally ill and had come to Johns Hopkins for part of her treatment. One of the last times he saw her, she encouraged him to return to Johns Hopkins if he ever had a serious condition.

So in 2014, when Hornberger, a 55-year-old Dallas tax lawyer, received a diagnosis of an iliac artery dissection, he thought about what his mom told him. He did some research on Johns Hopkins online and found a video of vascular surgeon James Black. “In the video, he was asked why he chose surgery, and he said, ‘I didn’t know there was another area of medicine,’” Hornberger recalls. “I told my wife, if he takes me, that’s who I’m going with. He’s as passionate about his profession as I am about mine.”

Before his appointment with Black, Hornberger had been anxious because he had heard that repairing this kind of tear involved a risky procedure. But Black set his mind at ease.

“When I was there, I felt like I was the most important thing on his mind. He gave me calming reassurance. It was more than the medicine,” says Hornberger. “I said to myself, ‘I know I can put my life in this guy’s hands.’”

Black explained that Hornberger didn’t yet need surgery because the dissection—a tear in an artery in the pelvis—wasn’t large enough to trigger an aneurysm. For now, he said, they would watch and wait, and when it gets to a certain size, Black will repair it using a new minimally invasive surgical technique.

Hornberger insists that the positive outlook Black inspired in him encouraged him to help others. “You could go through this process and be totally depressed about what’s around the corner,” he says, “or you could look at it as, hey, someone’s on my team. I’m going to get through this.”

As chair of AVANCE-Dallas, a nonprofit that offers support and education to families in at-risk communities, Hornberger recently helped organize a festival that celebrated the Latino culture of northern Texas. The event drew a crowd of over 24,000, and all of the net proceeds went to help the families. “I wanted to inspire people and do the same thing that Dr. Black did for me,” he says.