Dick knew even before he finished medical school that he would leave the East Coast for California.
“It wasn’t from TV. I just knew about the Free Speech movement and the anti-war movement and civil rights and I knew I had to be there. I applied to San Francisco General’s internship program. My interviewer was this gray-haired woman pediatrician. She said she didn’t have time to interview me, because there was this demonstration in Berkeley she wanted to go to. So I said, ‘Let’s go.’ It was Mario Savio speaking in Sproul Plaza. After that, I knew I had to go there. It was the only program I applied to. I was in Peru when the acceptance letter came. I had told my mother where I was, but poor Sylvia had no way to reach me.”
In 1974, Dick met Kathleen Campbell, a secretary in the Outpatient Department. They lived together for seven years, married in 1981, and had twin daughters, Sarah and Lynn, in 1983. Dick supported Kathleen in obtaining her law degree and becoming a federal court attorney in 1986.
They lived in the same house that Fine had purchased in 1968, while he was still a resident. For many years they rode the same motorcycle 1974 BMW R/75 on which he had given her a ride from the hospital to her flat in the Mission on that fateful day he broke his rule about not dating anyone from work.