"I got [the nickname] as a real small child. I really don't know how I got the name," Pantiga says. "I laugh at it because I was told that in Hawaiian it means 'stubborn.' "

After a short pause and a big smile he adds, laughing, "That's me."

But the self-described stubborn man is characterized in much different terms by family, friends and co-workers.

"He's a very generous man, very sincere, very kind," says Marilou Bernal.

Adds Kitty Monahan,"He's one who has been really, really good to people."

Bernal and Monahan, both residents of New Almaden, have known Pantiga for close to 50 years. He is their neighbor, and he married their good friend Cecyl in 1958.

The compliments about Pantiga's caring nature will be broadcast by someone other than family and friends on Feb. 24 when Pantiga is presented with the California Community Service Crystal Award from Blue Cross of California for his work with a free clinic in the Washington District of San Jose.

Pantiga is the medical director of RotaCare Bay Area's San Jose free clinic on Edwards Street, located on the campus of Washington Elementary School. He also volunteers his time for the School Health Clinic of Santa Clara County, which is located in the same building at the Washington Neighborhood Health Center.

"School Health Clinics nominated him," says Bradley Baxter, manager of medical field operations for Blue Cross of California. "They talked about what a wonderful physician he is...he works, as a retired physician, nights and weekends. He has been known as someone who can't say no to somebody who needs his help."

English is not the first language spoken by the majority of the patients seen at the clinic, nor is it Pantiga's, but he is fluent in the language, and fluent in the care needed by those who go to the clinic because they either have no medical insurance or don't earn enough money to pay for medical care.

"He loves that clinic. That's his life right there," daughter Kathy Pantiga says.

Sharing her father with others has been a way of life for Kathy and her seven siblings.

"He loves giving his time to people who can't afford the care, and he loves to help people. He's a caretaker," she says.

It was Cecyl who took on the role as the family's main caregiver when Pantiga decided to go back to school and get his degree in medicine. He already had a degree in biological sciences from San Jose State University but wanted to go on to become a doctor. Cecyl took on two jobs to support the family and help pay for Pantiga's education.

"My dad went to medical school with eight kids under his belt," Kathy says.

Cecyl accepted the assistance of her childhood friend, Monahan--known as "Aunt Kitty" to the Pantiga family--who lived with them for two years to help care for the children while Pantiga was away at medical school in Guadalajara.

Pantiga says he was almost 40 years old when he decided to go back to school to become a doctor. He says he had always loved medicine and was working as a lab technician at Los Gatos Community Hospital when he began applying to medical colleges and universities across the country.

"Back then they didn't really want to take someone who was almost 40," he says.

An administrator from one of the schools to which he had applied--Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York--wrote a three-page letter to Pantiga suggesting he look at schools outside the United States for acceptance, he says

He wound up in Mexico at Universidad Antonio, though he says he was not fluent in Spanish at the time. Understanding enough of the language to attend lectures conducted on Spanish, his education was supplemented by textbooks written in English, and purchased from Stanford University. Pantiga says he can remember having to buy only one textbook written in Spanish.

The Spanish he learned at school is practiced simultaneously with medicine in the clinic. On a recent Thursday afternoon patients at the Washington clinic began rolling in. The rooms of the clinic are clean and orderly with scant décor.

Save for a giant stuffed blue dog sitting near a soft-looking white ape and a few other bright, decorative features hanging on a corner wall, the lobby is sparse but practical, with a half-dozen chairs and an activity toy for young children strategically placed on a child-sized table.

Pantiga's first patient of the day is a wheezing, dark-haired 31Ž2-year-old girl accompanied by her younger sister and their mother, who understands and speaks little English. So Pantiga conducts the examination in Spanish.

The little girl sounds hoarse and has a virus. During the exam Pantiga learns she is asthmatic, so he takes them into another room so the girl can receive an inhaler that will help her breathe easier.

He gets the child settled for another staff member to administer the treatment and off he goes to see his next patient, Ricardo De Anda, a 33-year-old automotive painter who has burned his eyes at work with chemicals and heat.

Again, conversing in Spanish, he asks De Anda a series of questions, looks into his bloodshot eyes several times, asks more questions, explains some things, then slips out to the clinic's pharmacy, reappearing moments later with a small bottle of optical drops for De Anda.

Because of the nature of the clinic, Pantiga says he doesn't see a lot of urgent care needs--though he says there was a great deal of excitement when a woman delivered a baby in the office. However, emergency work was always a favorite of his, he says.

"You don't know what's going to come in next," Pantiga says.

Most patients he sees at the clinic--both as the school health clinic and the RotaCare clinic--suffer from chronic ailments, he says. It is those people, the ones who are too poor to afford medical care on their own, that he says he gets the most satisfaction out of treating.

He was a general practitioner with Kaiser Permanente before retiring about a decade ago--in spite of being a collector of antique watches, he wears the watch Kaiser gave him at his retirement--and Pantiga says that most of his patients there would thank him during their visit with him, but the people he attends to at the free clinic say it a little differently, he says.

"When they thank you, they really thank you," he says. "That makes me feel good."

But he says he doesn't feel so good when the same patients keep returning with the same complaints and he learns that they are not following his medical advice or taking the medicine he has prescribed.

That, he says, makes him "mad."

His patience with those patients doesn't really run thin though because friends, family and co-workers say he is a very patient man who is dedicated to his work and he genuinely cares about the people he treats.

Monahan says Pantiga is dedicated to his family, too, and she says he has always been good about pitching in at home and he is quick to "jump in the car" and help out with any of his 11 grandchildren. Manny and Cecyl were quick in deciding to adopt two boys when the opportunity presented itself.

Manny had been working at a hospital in Quincy, a small town about 60 miles east of Chico, when a set of twin boys became available for adoption. The Pantigas didn't hesitate to add the pair to their already large family of five at the time.

"We had only one son and he wanted a brother," Manny says.

Pantiga is still serving to please and pleased to serve. The Washington Neighborhood Health Center is the only RotaCare clinic in San Jose and until recently, it was also serving the Morgan Hill and Gilroy populations as well. RotaCare is funded by a combined effort of Rotary Clubs, hospitals, corporate donors and community support and it is staffed by volunteer medical professionals such as Pantiga.

Pantiga saw the need for the RotaCare clinic in Morgan Hill/Gilroy so he says he spent some time consulting and getting things going there. His co-worker Sam Gonzales, administrator of the Morgan Hill/Gilroy location, sees it a little differently.

"That place wouldn't have happened without him," Gonzales said.