Sam Acho didn't just play football. He built a hospital. The former Arizona Cardinals, Chicago Bears, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker used $100,000 from two Walter Payton Man of the Year award nominations to help fund the Living Hope Medical Center in Nigeria. The facility opened in June 2017, giving a community that had relied on visiting medical teams for decades a permanent place to get care.
It wasn't a sudden impulse. Acho’s parents, Dr. Sonny Acho and Christie Acho, had been running free medical missions in Nigeria since 1989. They’d treat thousands of patients during two-week visits, but they’d leave, and the need would remain. Sam, who grew up in Dallas, Texas, joined those missions as a teenager. He wasn’t a doctor. He handled crowd control, guided patients, and saw the makeshift facilities firsthand.
"They’d go to these 'hospitals' — I use quotes because they were really just abandoned buildings in the village — and they’d give out free medical care," Acho told the University of Texas at Austin in a 2023 interview. His father’s dream was simple but massive: build a permanent center. The family started pursuing the project in 2016. Then came the NFL nominations.
Acho was the Bears’ nominee for the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award in both 2016 and 2017. Each nomination came with a $50,000 charitable donation. He sent both checks to Living Hope Christian Ministries. The first $50,000 landed just months after the family decided to break ground. "When did I get nominated for this award?" Acho recalled asking. "It was just months after we said 'Let’s build.' So that $50,000 went straight to Living Hope Christian Ministries, which went straight to the hospital."
The NFL money was a big chunk, but not the whole pie. A 2016 celebrity waiter event raised another $60,000. Support from the University of Texas and football community helped close the gap. The hospital now stands as a permanent fixture, a direct result of a family’s decades of work and one player’s off-field recognition.
The Living Hope Medical Center is operational and serving patients year-round. No next fixture, but the mission continues as the community relies on the facility for ongoing healthcare.