Jack McConnell stopped to pick up a man who was walking down a dirt road without an umbrella on a drizzly day.

“Where you headed?” McConnell called out the window.

“To look for a job,” the man answered. “Any one I can get.”

“What’s your name?”

“James.”

“You married?”

“Yes. I’ve got two kids and my wife is pregnant with our third.”

“What do you do for medical care?” McConnell wondered. He was a retired doctor.

“We have to take care of ourselves,” James said. “No one else is going to help us.”

His answer would change thousands of lives across the country.