Identical twin doctors who grew up in poverty returned to their Virginia hometown to co-run an ER

Drs. Travan and Travis Jasper, identical twins who grew up without running water in Richmond, Virginia, now co-direct the emergency department at Chippenham Hospital in the same city.

The twins say they were among the poorest kids in their old Richmond neighborhood. Travan Jasper told CBS News they used to fetch water from a park because their home had none, and that hunger, both literal and for something more, drove them as children.

Travis Jasper said reaching their current roles feels almost unbelievable. "I don't think I could have dreamt it 40-some years ago," he told CBS News. Now the two run the emergency room together at the same hospital, in the city where they once went without basic necessities.

Their path matters for anyone who walks through Chippenham's ER doors without knowing the backstory of the doctors treating them. Patients meeting either twin are meeting someone who once had to leave home just to get drinking water, now standing at the head of one of the hospital's busiest departments. For a neighborhood that watched two hungry kids grow up with nothing, having them return as the people in charge of emergency care carries its own kind of weight.

Two brothers who once hauled water from a public park now co-run the emergency room in the city that shaped them.