Influential Women of South Texas: Dr. Jimie Owsley
Allison Ehrlich
Dr. Jimie Owsley believes in helping others. She follows through by not just treating patients in the emergency room and at her low-cost health clinic but also encouraging literacy with a free book a day program at her By the Book bookstore.
Owsley grew up in Chicago and joined the Army in 1989 after completing high school early. She started school at Chicago State University while also serving with an ambulance company in the National Guard. She completed medical school while also earning a master’s degree in pathology, then served at Walter Reed Medical Center focusing on surgery. While working at Martin Army Hospital in Georgia in 2003, she was deployed to Iraq.
“Triage was the most difficult part because it is in my heart to never give up,” Owlsey told MD Monthly in a 2016 interview. “But I was painfully aware of our limited resources, such as blood, and the risk of increased causalities if not used wisely.”
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After moving to Corpus Christi and working as a trauma surgeon for the Christus Spohn Health System, she saw the need for a low-cost health clinic in the city. She opened The People’s Clinic on Morgan Avenue, seeing patients for $15.
“It really shouldn't cost anything to stay healthy," she told the Caller-Times in 2018.
Through the clinic Owlsey tends to patients who don’t have insurance, offering everything from diet counseling to hypertension treatment. She knows treating issues while they are still small helps prevent health problems from worsening and leading to more expensive hospital care. Her inspiration was a clinic she visited growing up on the southside of Chicago.
In 2016 she opened a bookstore, By the Book, on Ayers Street. Ongoing street construction for more than two years kept it from fully opening, but in 2019 the business reopened full time. It’s one of the few independently-owned bookstores in the area, and offers a free book a day, often geared toward kids.
"The books are typically children's books or classics and they are available to really anyone," Owsley said in 2019. "But the purpose is to build libraries. Pretty much anything I do, I know I want to give back to the community."
