It was June 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War when 14-year-old Leland Shapiro decided to hide three members of a family in the Republic of Biafra in his house, a former West African nation, from the Nigerian army.
He followed his father, a former History professor at UCLA, to West Africa to teach Nigerians the way of leaving.
Shapiro was then ordered to leave the country as a result of hiding those three people and went to Israel for a year and a half before moving back to Los Angeles after being kicked off Israel due to war reasons.
Since he was a kid his roots pulled him towards teaching and helping humans and animals.
Now, Dr. Leland Shapiro, 58, is the chair of the Agriculture and Natural Resources Department, the director of the Pre-Veterinary Science Program at Pierce College, and has been teaching at the institution for the past 40 years.
He loves his job and being at Pierce, he says.
“I am the most fortunate teacher, everyone of my students works very hard. If I would’ve won the lottery I would still be doing what I do now.”
Shapiro, a Los Angeles native, born in 1953, graduated from Chatsworth High School in 1971.
Two years before he started high school though, in 1965, he started to practice what would become one of his passions, Martial Arts, specially Kung Fu.
“It helps me relax and understand life in general,” he says.
He holds the title of Kung Fu Master or A-degree which he obtained just three years ago.
He started his life at Pierce as a student in the Fall semester of 1972 before being drafted to go to Vietnam.
After President Nixon put a hold on the draft, he was brought back and started to attend Cal Poly where he obtained a double major; a Bachelors’ degree in Dairy Science and one in Biology.
The Dean of student services at Pierce at the time called him and offered him a job of taking care of the cows in the college’s farm and to teach some classes, he says.
“I was afraid to get even in front of any group of people yet alone teach a class.”
In 1990, Shapiro earned his Doctorate degree on Reproduction Sociology at Oregon State University.
He then went on to obtain two post-Doctorates on Bio Ethics in 1994 and 1996 from Georgetown and Iowa State respectively.
Period in which he met his wife Lori Shapiro, a corporate sales associate and Newport Beach native, whom he met 15 years ago but started dating five years later, which led to them getting married four and a half years ago.
Although he has 40 years teaching at Pierce, he says he still wants to teach for five more years.
He has 179 students who either are going or have gone into Veterinary Schools, he plans to get to 200 students before he retires, he says.
He has taught 35 different classes while at Pierce and has gone on to write 16 different books on Veterinary Science.
In addition to that, Dr. Shapiro is also a member of the board of directors for the Society of Veterinary and Medical Ethics.
Since 1987 and under his leadership, the Pre-Veterinary Club partners with the Walking Shield American Indian Society for the organization’s annual toy drive providing clothes, food, and school supplies to those in need.
“I get a lot of help from the [Pierce] administration, faculty members, and students because without them I couldn’t do it,” he says.
Life can take its tolls in many ways though as on July 6 of this year, Dr. Shapiro was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor which was successfully removed 13 days later in an eight-hour surgery procedure conducted by Dr. Keith Black, chairman of the neurosurgery department and director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Even though Dr. Shapiro is still recuperating full control of mechanical functions like breathing, swallowing, or talking, he is still very much active at Pierce teaching and guiding his Pre-Veterinarian students to a better future.
