When Shane Gagon goes bowling after work, he is still on the job.

His shift may be over, and the clinic may be closed. But in Price, the line between personal and professional life is thin. Here, a doctor never stops being a doctor. For Gagon, that has never been a drawback. It’s the point.

Family medicine felt like the right path for someone who wanted to care for a whole community, from infancy to old age. So, after medical school and residency, he and his wife, Gina, came home to build a life—and a practice—in Price.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” Gagon says. Caring for friends and neighbors is deeply rewarding, but it can also be heavy. “When you know the patient sitting in front of you, the responsibility feels different. More human. More urgent.”

In rural Utah, medicine is not anonymous, hurried, or detached. Doctors must be visible and invested. A rural physician is not just a provider passing through someone’s story. They’re part of it.

That’s the hidden texture of rural medicine. The work follows you home because the people you care for are stitched into your everyday life.

For Gagon, rural medicine is about building a life of service in the place that shaped him. In Price, everybody knows the doctor, and that’s exactly why he’s there.

A Local’s View

Where would you take a friend visiting Price to dinner?
Probably the Country Club—they have a nice steak there.

What’s a value that has shaped your life and your work?
Do the right things for the right reasons.

What do you do for fun?
We have a boat and go to Lake Powell throughout the year.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give a medical student looking into rural practice?
To spend real time in a rural community first and make sure it’s a lifestyle that truly fits you. In rural medicine, you must be all in. It’s hard to be a part-time or anonymous doctor in a small town, because everyone knows who you are. That’s part of the job and part of the privilege.

Darian Wilks didn’t plan on moving back home after occupational therapy training. “There’s nothing to do there,” she remembers thinking.

But once she started having kids, Wilks realized Price was the perfect place. “I wanted to settle in a small town,” she says. “It’s just nice for raising a family.”

She was also drawn to the variety offered by practicing in a rural setting. “You get to see so many different conditions,” she says.

In her three years since returning, Wilks has done a little bit of everything: outpatient therapy and acute care in Castleview Hospital, school district therapy, home health, and early intervention.

“It’s very flexible,” she says. “I can be in the outpatient clinic for part of the day and then go and see some early intervention patients.” She sets her own schedule.

Wilks likes how the Castle Valley community is so tight-knit. “It’s easy to build close relationships with all your patients,” she says.

In Wilks’ experience, these personal connections make patients more open to participating in therapies and following through on recommendations. “Patients feel like they know and trust you,” she says.

Wilks loves being in Price because of the quiet environment and lower cost of living, along with the ability to be near family. Only an hour and half from Utah County, it is just far enough away from the commotion that her surroundings are quiet and peaceful. “It’s a nice location, but still away from all the busyness,” she says.

A Local’s View

What do you miss when you’re away from Price?
I miss the quiet. There’s no traffic. When you go up north, it’s just so busy. It feels chaotic, and there are so many people.

Three words you’d use to describe Price:
Quiet, tight-knit, slow-paced.

What do you like to do in Price outside of work?
Me and my kids go outside a lot. We’ll go four-wheeling, go to parks, go swimming.

Where would you take a friend to dinner in Price?
Groggs Pinnacle Brewing.

The first time Marcos Valdez visited Price, he swore he would never return. But life has a funny way of circling back.

Growing up in Argentina, he remembers his mother suffering painful kidney stones. His father reassured him that the doctor would help her feel better. Valdez wanted to be someone who could make things better.

That instinct found fullest expression in family medicine. As a medical student, Valdez returned to Price for a rotation at Gagon Family Medicine. He found something he didn’t expect: a place of possibility.

Now, Valdez speaks about Price as though his life is inseparable from the landscape. His family lives on five acres with gardens, goats, and dozens of specialty chickens, along with a homemade demolition derby area in the backyard.

To him, rural medicine isn’t just a quieter version of city medicine. “In bigger cities,” he says, “family medicine can sometimes feel repetitive. In rural communities, the work asks more of you. It’s almost like you have to treat patients like a specialist without being a specialist.”

To students considering rural medicine, Valdez counsels, “You do not know it until you live it. What rural doctors do cannot be understood from a distance.”

In Price, Valdez has found a life that is hands-on, demanding, and real. He gets to think hard, move fast, teach, raise a family, and help people in ways that are immediate and lasting. He gets to be the kind of doctor he imagined as a little boy: one who can make things better.

A Local’s View

What’s a value that has shaped your life?
Integrity. That means doing the right thing for the right reasons, even when it is hard or inconvenient. In medicine, integrity is what builds trust with patients, and that trust matters more than anything.

On your day off, what are you doing?
I like to rally cars and race them. I’d say I’m better at breaking them than fixing them. I also like to take my kids fossil hunting.

What advice would you give to students looking to get into rural medicine?
Everyone should do a rural rotation, even if you aren’t looking to live in a rural area. City doctors will inevitably have to take a transfer patient from a rural town, and when you have the experience of working in a place like Price, you’ll be able to have more empathy to your patients in the future.

As a young girl, Camrey Tuttle knew she wanted to be a nurse. She also knew she wanted to be a mom, carrying a kind of conviction and clarity most adults would envy. Growing up in Orangeville, a little south of Price, she felt driven to build a life around caring for others and building the future she’d imagined.

“I never really planned to come back here,” she said. “Life just pulled me here, I guess.”

Becoming a nurse set her on a career path, but eastern Utah gave her something different: familiarity, belonging, and a way of moving through the world that felt deeply personal.

For Tuttle, that sense of connection now shapes her life and her work as a nurse practitioner at Gagon Family Medicine in Price. She understands rural labor and its effect on the body. Her uncle was a coal miner. Her husband’s family owns ranches. She knows the repetitive strain of outdoor work.

“When people come in with tennis elbow,” she says, “I know what it’s like to be working on fences all day, and it helps me give better care.”

With fewer specialists nearby, local providers often fill gaps that might otherwise require hours of travel. They must think broadly, act resourcefully, and do as much as they can close to home.

“I get to work at the very top of my license,” Tuttle says. “We’re all working to provide the best care to our community. The best in the nation.”

A Local’s View

Where would you take someone who was visiting Price to dinner?
We really like Club Mecca. Good sandwiches!

On your day off, what are you doing?
We spend very little time at our house. We’re outdoors, hunting, or taking kids to various activities and family events.

What’s a value that has shaped your life and your career?
I value the relationships I have with my patients and the trust they give me. It’s a privilege when someone comes in and says, “OK, I’ll do it because you say so.” When people give me that trust, I try to give them my full emotional availability and the best care.

Daniel Atwood grew up wanting to be a surgeon. Shadowing at a pharmacy changed that. He applied to pharmacy school at the U and never looked back.

During pharmacy school, many students seemed intent on staying in the city for their careers, but Atwood felt differently. “There was always something that drew me back to Price,” he says. “I like the fact that I get to know people.”

Atwood believes his patients also appreciate knowing their pharmacist. “I think having those relationships helps in terms of being a comfort to the patient,” he says.

He enjoys the variety of his work at Castleview Hospital, where his responsibilities include the ICU, pediatrics, neonatal medicine, and general internal medicine. “Here, we do everything,” he says. “It keeps things interesting.”

The assortment of work also keeps Atwood sharp, which is why he says experience at a rural practice is valuable, even for trainees who plan to practice in urban settings. “Rural Utah provides an opportunity to gain experience and practice in areas where you might not think you can,” he says.

While he sometimes misses being at the U in Salt Lake City, Atwood likes living where life is less busy and his commute to work is only five minutes.

“Rural Utah is not for everybody,” he says. “I like the slow pace. I like the community-ness of it. You can have that in a big city, but I like the togetherness we have down here. There are more benefits to it than people realize, especially when it comes to being a health care practitioner. I think if I had to do it over again, I’d still come back to Price.”

A Local’s View

Three words you’d use to describe Price:
Slow, old, dry (but in the best way).

What do you miss most when you’re away from Price?
I like the slow pace. I like the community-ness of it. Again, you can have that in a big city, but I just like the togetherness that we have down here in Price.

What do you like to do in Price outside of work?
Being outdoors, fly fishing, yard work, going to the mountains.

Where you’d take a friend visiting Price to dinner:
Balance Rock Eatery & Pub.

A few years ago, Paul Martinez took time off work to recover from knee surgery and found himself going stir-crazy. “I enjoyed going to work,” he says. “That’s what I like to do.”

Martinez has been around Price for most of his life, but he never expected to open a dental practice there. While attending dental school in Washington, DC, he liked the social scene but found it hard to adjust to the long commutes, crowds, and lack of open spaces. “I was raised in a rural area,” he explains. “The city life was hard on me.”

He decided to settle in Price to be near family and expand their ranching operation. The flexibility of rural practice made that easier. Martinez still checks on his ranch every week. He appreciates the break from the stress that comes with owning a dental practice.

Because specialists aren’t available for complex procedures, Martinez takes on more than he would at an urban practice. This makes his job more intense, but the lower cost of living makes it feel worth it, he explains.

His wife loves the city, and city life is easier to access from Price than people might think, Martinez observes. Provo and Salt Lake are only an hour or two away, respectively.

As he nears retirement, Martinez admits he’s not in a rush to give up his practice. “This is the greatest job I’ve ever had,” he says. “I just have a really good connection to the community.”

* Paul Martinez is affiliated with the U through the School of Dentistry’s Associated Provider Network. He earned his DDS from Georgetown University School of Dentistry.

A Local’s View

What do you miss when you’re away from Price?
I miss that slow-paced lifestyle.

Something that surprised you about practicing in Price:
You know everything that’s going on, and you’re involved a lot because you’re looking at how to advance not only yourself but the community. And so you get involved a lot more than somebody in an urban area.

Where you’d take a friend visiting Price to dinner:
The Country Club or Cowboy Club.

Three words you’d use to describe Price:
Slow-paced, relaxed, pleasurable.