Dr. Rosemary Maduka (her patients call her Rosemary) is a family medicine practitioner in Storrs so popular among her patients that she is now accepting into her practice the infant great-grandchildren of some of the first people she treated as she began her career over 30 years ago.

Even now, when Dr. Maduka adds a new member of a local family as a patient — like, in the photo above, 4-month-old Sonny DeVivo of Willimantic, the fourth generation of his family she has treated — she tries to make it reminiscent of her own experience with doctors as a child.

“I had childhood asthma,” says Dr. Maduka, who was born in California and raised in Nigeria. “So many times, I was in and out of the hospital. I liked how I was cared for and how my parents were involved in that. So from an early age, I knew I wanted to make a change in people’s lives and the whole family. The field that would do that for me is family medicine.”

Here’s her story:

Dr. Rosemary Maduka practices family medicine with the Hartford HealthCare Medical Group in Storrs, Connecticut. For an appointment, click here, or call 860.456.9720.