Born in Lewiston and raised around the area, Patrick Dempsey has become an instantly recognizable actor after ten years of playing Dr. Derek Shepherd (aka Dr. McDreamy) on the ABC drama “Grey’s Anatomy.”

His interests, talents and businesses are diverse: He started performing as a competitive juggler as a teenager at St. Dominic Academy; he raced cars professionally since 2004; he even has two fragrances with Avon.

When his mother Amanda was diagnosed with cancer in 1997, Dempsey and his sister Mary saw a need for cancer patients in the area—somewhere to find resources, connect with patients and survivors, and to simply relax.

The Dempsey Center opened in 2008, investing in the well-being of central Maine cancer patients and in Lewiston’s economic development. This September, the tenth-annual Dempsey Challenge, a run/walk/cycling event, aims to raise $1.5 million to support the Center’s free programming.

Video Recorded July 23, 2018

Mary Pols writes primarily about sustainability for Source. She came to the Press Herald in late 2013 to work on Source after a long career writing about movies. She has almost, but not quite, broken the habit of waking pre-dawn on Oscar nomination day. Mary was born in Portland and raised in Brunswick, but was away for 25 years so it’s been a thrill for her to learn about her state in the 21st century. She studied art history at Duke and her masters in journalism is from UC Berkeley. She’s happiest reporting a story in Maine’s great outdoors, whether she’s watching seaweed farmers plant a crop or eating fresh caught perch with an ice fisherman while a hungry eagle hovers nearby. History really floats her boat as well (once she wrote an entire story about the life of a very old and rare apple tree in Freeport). She lives in Brunswick with her hockey-obsessed son and their dog, a foster-fail kitten and an elderly Maine Coon.