After Watching His Mom Go Through Cancer, Son Is Inspired to Change His Career and Help Others (Exclusive)

Charles Logan believes it’s never too late for a career change.

In 2011, Logan was serving in the Coast Guard doing security detail for former President Barack Obama. Now, at 38, he’s training to be a cardiothoracic surgeon.

Logan grew up outside Seward, Alaska, in a house that his parents built with their own hands. In fact, his mother, who was a nurse and trained as a carpenter, did a lot of the work “with a baby on her back,” he adds.

But Logan’s own path began while working at a local fire department while in high school. After graduating, he became an EMT and continued to work as a firefighter and first responder while commuting to Anchorage, where he attended college.

Still, that wasn’t enough for him. “I wanted to do something more,” Logan says. “I wanted adventure.”

He left college after one year and joined the Coast Guard in 2006, where he was stationed in Texas.

Although he enjoyed his job, after his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer the following year, he moved back to Alaska.

He applied for a job in an anti-terrorism unit based in Anchorage — where his mom was getting treatment — and rented a two-bedroom apartment so that his mother wouldn’t have to deal with the 120-mile commute from their hometown.

During this time, his unit was deployed a lot. He was gone about 270 days a year, either training or conducting domestic and overseas missions.  

But when the 38 year old was home, if he was able, he went with his mother to her treatment.

“It was impressive, what they could do,” he says of his mother’s radiation treatments. “The surgeon was just so, so wonderful, so that left an impression on me.”

When he left the Coast Guard in 2011, Logan finished college at the University of Alaska. He then attended medical school at the University of Washington in Seattle, intending to be a family physician and work in rural Alaska.

Yet, during his last rotation in surgery in medical school, he “fell in love.”

Happily, his mother is now cancer-free — and very active. ‘’She just built a deck for my grandmother,” he says. “I have three children now, and my mother is their best friend. She’s definitely a fantastic person.”

When he completes his cardiothoracic training at Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute, he and his wife Monica, whom he met in medical school, plan to return to Alaska.

“You should always be looking ahead at what you want to do next, and it’s okay to pivot from one thing to the next,” Logan says. “When you’re in it, it’s a little unclear where you’re going sometimes. Looking back, it all led here, and I think that that is something I’d like other people to realize: The journey makes sense in the end.”