Jean Carlos Alvarado Colon is not done.

Meet one of Vet Candy’s Rising Stars of Vet Med 2026. Jean Carlos Alvarado Colon's parents gave him one piece of advice before he left Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. It was short. It was in Spanish. And it changed the course of everything that followed.

"Jean Carlos, dile que si a cualquier oportunidad." Say yes to any opportunity.

He said yes. And then he kept saying it. A second-year veterinary student at Colorado State University, JC has built a student-led organization that has deployed over 120 volunteers, executed 8 community events, and delivered care to 507 animals. During a single clinic in April 2026, that number jumped by 144 in one day. All of this from a kid who, not long ago, was packing a bag and boarding a flight to Colorado because a storm had taken out the power grid of his home island.

That's the thing about saying yes. You don't always know what you're agreeing to.

“Saying yes didn't just open a door. It also taught me how to build one for others.”

The First Yes

It started modestly enough. During his second year at CSU's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, a faculty member reached out to JC with a specific request. A fourth-year student wanted to create a vaccine clinic for pets in Spanish-speaking communities. The faculty member thought of JC. She knew about his background in community outreach. She knew he was bilingual. She asked if he could help.

What followed was six months of work. JC and the fourth-year student wrote a full proposal from scratch, partnered with Animal Friends Alliance, a local Fort Collins shelter, and organized a clinic that provided preventive care to 51 pets in an underserved community. Fifty-one animals that might not have received care otherwise. And a room full of veterinary students who got to practice medicine for the first time on patients who needed them.

"We provided services to a community and also gave hands-on experiences to future veterinarians," JC says. The double impact was not lost on him. He is the kind of person who counts both things simultaneously.

After it was over, JC started thinking bigger. He noticed two gaps running in parallel: veterinary students who needed hands-on experience before their clinical years, and communities without reliable access to affordable pet care. The question he kept asking himself was this: how do you build something that solves both at once?

What FETCH Became

The answer was FETCH. Fostering Education Through Community Health is a student-led initiative that JC founded at CSU after that first vaccine clinic lit the match. The organization runs two primary programs: high-volume vaccine clinics in predominantly Spanish-speaking underserved communities, and similar events in partnership with a nonprofit that serves pets belonging to unhoused veterans.

The numbers after 1.5 years are not small. Over 120 veterinary student volunteers. Eight community events. Five hundred and seven animals served. And a clinic in April 2026 that saw 144 animals in a single day.

But what makes FETCH different from a standard service-learning event is the infrastructure JC built around it. These are not pop-up tables in a parking lot hoping someone shows up. These are coordinated partnerships with community liaisons, often from local government offices or building management, who distribute information about events in advance. The flyers are bilingual. Spanish-speaking veterinarians and students are recruited specifically, at every level of language proficiency from conversational to native. Handouts at the events are bilingual. The outreach is done in person, with Spanish-speaking volunteers who knock on doors.

The model is borrowed in part from a month JC spent in Cintsa, South Africa, before veterinary school, working in Xhosa communities as part of a pre-veterinary program. That experience showed him the difference between showing up to help and actually being a partner. In South Africa, he watched how care could be imposed rather than offered, how assumptions about what a community needed could crowd out listening. He also watched what happened when a community was treated as a participant rather than a recipient: a community member, knowing the team was coming, went door to door to tell his neighbors to have their dogs ready.

"What may seem like a simple task of communication is a great example of what community-based participatory approaches are all about," JC says. "In this model, communities become partners in care rather than passive recipients."

He brought that framework back to Colorado and built FETCH around it.

507 animals served

120+ student volunteers

8 community events

144 animals in a single day (April 2026)

Why Representation Is Not a Side Note

JC is clear about something: his identity is not separate from his medicine. It is part of it.

During an externship at an emergency hospital, he walked into a room and spoke Spanish to a family that needed translation services. Their relief was immediate. That moment did not feel like a bonus or an add-on to his clinical training. It felt like the whole point.

Hispanic and Latino individuals make up roughly 20 percent of the U.S. population. Only 5 percent of veterinarians identify as Hispanic. JC does not present that gap as an abstraction. He presents it as something he intends to close, in part by being in rooms where his presence tells other people that the door is open.

"Representation matters not just in numbers, but in culture, language, and trust," he says. "And, of course, a lack of cafecitos."

He says it with a laugh, but the point underneath is serious. Trust is not built in a single appointment. It is built through continuity, through familiarity, through the feeling that the person across the exam table actually knows your world. JC knows what it costs when that trust is missing, and he knows what it can produce when it is present.

“Being bilingual and from Puerto Rico is not just part of my identity. It is one of my greatest strengths.”

What Is Actually Wrong With Veterinary Medicine

Ask JC about the biggest problem facing the field and he does not go for the easy answer. He goes for the one that keeps him up at night.

The rising cost of care and the access barriers that come with it. A recent AVMA study found that 81 percent of veterinarians reported clients being more cost-conscious in 2024, and diagnostic services were among the first things declined. JC is a third-year student. He is not practicing yet. But he is already building a framework for how to handle the conversations those statistics represent.

He talks about spectrum of care and contextualized care, not as theoretical concepts from a lecture but as tools he has already been applying. He watched a senior veterinarian blame herself when clients could not afford hospitalization. He wishes, looking back, that someone had given that veterinarian the language to understand that the situation was not a failure of her communication. It was a reflection of the client's reality. The framework does not remove the difficulty. It redirects it, from blame to problem-solving.

"Good medicine is not always about choosing the most cutting-edge option," JC says. "It is about finding a plan that keeps the patient in care while honoring the family's goals within realistic expectations."

He cites a case from an ER externship: a cat with diabetic ketoacidosis was stabilized at the emergency hospital, then transferred to her regular veterinarian for daytime monitoring because overnight emergency care was financially out of reach. She shuttled between hospitals. The arrangement was not textbook. It worked. The cat got care. The owner stayed in the relationship with the veterinary team. Nobody got blamed for a system problem.

JC carries a line from Ted Lasso around with him like a credo: be curious, not judgmental. It sounds simple. In a profession where the gap between what medicine can do and what people can afford is widening, it takes real practice.

In Five Years

JC plans to graduate, complete an internship, and practice in small animal emergency medicine. He describes the environment as one that suits him, fast-paced, high-stakes, requiring someone who can think quickly, communicate under pressure, and, importantly, keep the energy going. "It's giving The Pitt," he says, "but with support, laughter, and lunch and learns."

Beyond the ER, he wants to continue building access to care in underserved communities. He is honest that he does not yet know exactly what that role looks like. What he knows is the direction. It involves Spanish-speaking pet owners, the bridging of a trust gap that does not close overnight, and doing all of it with people around him who are having a good time.

He is a self-described Type A vet student. He has a plan. He is also, by his own account, open to the plan changing. He read a book recently, Feck Perfuction by James Victore, and a passage about planning stuck with him: that a plan is your true north, a vision of who you can be and an acceptance that you are worthy of a beautiful and meaningful life.

Jean Carlos Alvarado Colon left Puerto Rico with a single instruction from his parents and turned it into 507 animals served, 120 volunteers trained, and a model for community-based veterinary care that he is now teaching others to replicate. He is in his third year of veterinary school.

He is not done.

“I thought, how can we combine community impact and learning? That question led to everything.”

Three Things JC Would Tell His Younger Self

Be kind to yourself. Growth takes time, and you are not expected to know everything right away, even when the environment around you makes you feel like you should.

Embrace who you are. Your identity is not separate from your medicine. It is part of it. The skills and experiences that feel like they live outside the clinic are often the ones that matter most inside it.

Have a plan, and be open to it changing. If it does, improvise. And listen to your mother. She is usually right.