Last-minute cancelation of planned surgery can have substantial psychological, social, and economic effects for patients/families and also leads to wastage of expensive health-care resources. In order to have a deeper understanding of the contextual, psychological, practical, and behavioral factors that potentially impact pediatric surgery cancelation, we conducted a qualitative study to create ‘personas’ or fictional portraits of parents who are likely to cancel surgery. We conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with 21 parents of children who were considered ‘at risk’ for surgical cancelation and whose scheduled surgery was canceled at late notice. From the themes, patterns, and associated descriptive phrases in the data, we developed and validated five different personas of typical scenarios reflecting parent experiences with surgery and surgery cancelations. The personas are being employed to guide contextualized development of interventions tailored to prototypical families as they prepare and attend for surgery.