Richard is in a tough line of work. The Navy veteran is a Connecticut marshal responsible for taking prisoners back and forth to court. In the past couple of years, he's found himself in public and private scenarios that tested his courage, strength and resolve. A pepper-spray incident that kept him hospitalized for a month; eleven surgeries on one knee and six on the other; a cancer diagnosis (false, it turned out, after a Christmas week spent thinking he was under a death sentence) – all these attempted to throttle him to the ground. Instead, they positioned him to accept the greatest challenge: saving his own life by facing the seriousness of his obesity. Richard needed to lose 150 lbs.

"I heard about St. Vincent's Bariatric program on the radio and got their information at my V.A. hospital," says Richard. "I had been to the cardiologist. He said, 'You have two choices. You can lose weight or you can die.'" Having waded his way through Atkins to Weight Watchers to the South Beach diet and back, Richard knew St. Vincent's program was different and that it could work for him. He opted for having a gastric by-pass, learned everything he needed to know at the seminar, and went forward.

He's lost 112 lbs and is now close to goal. It was tough going for a while. Would he do it again at St. Vincent's, knowing what he knows now?

Absolutely, says Richard.