Dr. Stephen Cardos after more than 46 years in since July 1975 serving generations of families children has retired and was honored by Brighton’s City Council with January 18th as Dr. Stephen Cardos day.
“I feel thankful that my life’s work was meaningful and was appreciated,” said Dr. Cardos.
Cardos was born in Brooklyn, New York and graduated from New York University Medical School and did his residency at Bellevue Hospital, New York.
After leaving New York City in 1973 he spent two years in Omaha, Nebraska hospital, and then joined Air Force.
“I was the chief of Pediatrics in the Air Force, at a very busy clinic,” said Dr. Cardos.
Dr. Cardos wanted to be a doctor since was very young and also had asthma so he had lots of exposure being around doctors. It was one role model that inspired him and he knew going forward it was what he wanted to do.
“It’s was tough especially when my friends were having parties- I was studying,” said Dr. Cardos.
When training at Bellevue hospital Dr. Cardos was seeing primarily homeless people who were living on the streets or where ever.
“It was very frustrating to have them as patients because you could get them all cleaned up to get rid of their body lice or all their diseases- then two weeks later- they were back in the hospital with the same thing all over again,” Cardos said.
It was so frustrating for Dr. Cardos and it gave a distorted view of what real medicine was like and also for the rest of the country. It was when he decided he wanted to go into pediatrics.
“Kids are innocent and had no say over their social situation. It’s has been very enjoyable to work with children.
Cardos moved to Brighton in April 1975, purchased a home, and started working in July at his practice. Also, he was the only pediatrician in all of Adams County for over 20-years. Before COVID, Dr. Cardos was slowing down was only seeing patients three days a week. Then COVID hit it was he stopped seeing patients.
“The practice had a big decrease in the number of patients. You would think the opposite, everybody’s sick and would come in, but nobody came in because they were afraid,” he said. “So the practice went down and I stopped seeing patients and managed the practice for the next two years.”
Best moments for Dr. Cardos, he had seen four to five cases of three generations of families. The grandmother, the parents, and their children.
“Multiple generations of the parents being my patients and then their children are my patients.
It’s kind of nice that we all had long, long relationships.”
In addition, Dr. Cardos has been involved with a lot of community service over the years. He was one of the founders of the Almost Home shelter. “In 1980 the Catholics Church was sheltering about 30 people in the basement every night.
It was a community joint effort, the Catholic Church provided the space, the Methodist Church provided blankets, and the Presbyterian Church provided food,” Dr. Cardos said.
With a change of priests at the Catholic Church, the new priests did not want to use the basement as a shelter anymore.
“So the committee that was helping with this we decided we need to build a shelter and that eventually became “Almost Home,” said Dr. Cardos.
“It’s doing very well. It was a small little operation with one person, one family and now we have a bigger house for six families.”
The Future
Dr. Cardos has a wife, four kids, and 10 grandchildren. Has love for music and plays classical guitar. His real passion is ballroom dancing and also does some teaching of the dance. Also, he likes to cook, do photography, and plans to do some traveling.