ALISO VIEJO, Calif.—Residents and patients are mourning Dr. John Cheng outside of his office in Aliso Viejo, California, with flowers and hand-written letters commemorating the compassion and selflessness he embodied throughout his life, which was cut short by a May 15 mass shooting at a church in the neighboring city of Laguna Woods.
“What inspired me to get involved in medicine in the first place is I come from a family of physicians, and I saw the care that my father viewed upon his patients in a small community in East Texas,” Dr. John Cheng said in a 2012 video introducing his medical practice. “It’s those small-town values that were engrained in me when I was younger that really help create this sense of community, and in this modern society in these modern times, we miss a lot of that….