Dr. Jeff Goodman

His Story

The Doctor Who Never Left

Jeff Goodman grew up in Culver City, California, earned his medical degree at Creighton University in Omaha, and completed his internship at Los Angeles County Hospital. He had plans to practice in Idaho. But fate — and Kaua'i — had other ideas.

On a vacation to the island, where his parents kept a home at Wailua River Lots, Jeff responded to a medical emergency and rode the ambulance to Wilcox Hospital. He met the doctors. They offered him a job. He took it. The clinic in Kīlauea became his home — literally. He lived in the old stone building where the plantation doctor's office opened, half house and half healing place, a few miles from the lighthouse at the edge of the world.

He was met at the airport by Mike and Char Dyer — the beginning of a lifelong friendship. He started at the Kapa'a clinic, then opened the first North Shore clinic, and for more than fifty years served every corner of this island. He never left.

Rotary & Legacy on Kaua'i

He Didn't Just Belong — He Built

Jeff joined the Rotary Club of Hanalei Bay in 2003 and served as Club President in 2006–2007. He believed with conviction that every person on Kaua'i should know how to save a life — and he acted on it.

He launched the Heart of Gold campaign, championing CPR awareness across the state. Under his leadership, the club placed 55 AEDs at locations across Kaua'i and Ni'ihau, working with the Kaua'i Fire Department to train community members. In 2017 alone, the program donated and placed 17 AEDs and trained 125 people — all free of charge. The Garden Island newspaper covered the campaign multiple times as it grew.

He also helped plant the seeds of the Kaua'i Rescue Tubes Program, which Monty Downs brought to the club and which — through the work of Branch Lotspeich, John Gillen, and others — became an independent force of its own. Today, 700 more rescue tubes are being installed across Hawai'i through a state grant. The seeds Jeff helped plant keep growing.

And there was Linda — his first wife, who co-anchored those early North Shore years. She started the science fair at Kīlauea School, recorded the oral histories of plantation elders, and was instrumental in the albatross reintegration program at the Kīlauea Lighthouse. Her ashes were scattered off the lighthouse point onto the bird refuge island, by special dispensation. Jeff carried her with him in everything he did.

A Life Well Lived

Jeff & Barbara

Barbara first met Jeff in 1972 — he was her family's doctor. He delivered her daughter Natalie in 1978. Years passed. Life turned. And love found its way back around, the way it sometimes does when two people have always been in the same orbit.

Together they decorated for Halloween, worked in the yard, cleaned the highway shoulder — Jeff always two yards ahead of Barbara, waving his orange bag so every car would see her first. They stopped at the Humane Society on every trip into town. She'd bring flowers home and say "Jeff, make these pretty" — and he would, arranging each bloom with the same quiet care he gave to everything.

He loved his cats, his music — Fleetwood Mac, Maroon 5, the Stones — and the simple pleasure of a life fully shared. He enjoyed every bit of it, right up to the end.