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Holmberg, who married Maureen Shields, a pediatric nurse, in 1981, has been in the field for three of his eleven months so far with CDC. In Atlanta he spends much of his time analyzing the data he has collected. Holmberg frets occasionally about becoming a workaholic, but clearly loves his job. "The medical sleuthing—that's the most fun. The clues start to fall into place step by step as you go through it." The disease detective's zeal is admired by his superiors. "His is the old hard-work ethic," says Dr. Mitchell Cohen, Holmberg's supervisor. "What we constantly do is pose questions. If one question doesn't pan out, he'll take another approach."
Holmberg has just signed on for another year at CDC. "I'll probably stay in public health one way or another," he says. "I'm going to spend a significant portion of my career in backwoods, dirty places trying to stop diseases that I don't like. That includes all of them."