Buena Clinton Gets a Peek at a Caring Neighbor

The examination rooms looked pristine, smelling of fresh paint and plaster instead of medicine and rubbing alcohol. In the pediatric room, colored soft-sculptured balloons decorated the white walls.

It will be another week before residents of Buena Clinton, considered Orange County’s worst slum, can climb atop the examination tables to seek medical treatment and information at La Amistad de Jose, a neighborhood health service sponsored by St. Joseph Hospital.

Building Is Blessed

But Saturday, under a hot autumn sun, curious inhabitants of the blighted Garden Grove neighborhood began venturing toward the two-story offices as the Most Rev. Tomas Clavel, vicar for the Latino community of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, sprinkled the beige and brown walls with holy water to bless the building.

Minutes later, Disneyland characters arrived to hand out toys and balloons to celebrate the clinic’s imminent opening.

La Amistad de Jose--in English, “the friendship of Joseph”--will be staffed by a full-time doctor, nurse, medical technician and office manager to provide regular medical care to people who can rarely afford to seek treatment, said Sister Michaela Rock, vice president of human development at St. Joseph Hospital. “We stayed away from the word ‘clinic.’ We want this to be a neighborhood health service,” she explained.

The staff expects to treat not only coughs and sniffles inside the 4,000-square-foot building, but also the chronic problems that plague depressed areas, such as malnutrition, anemia, poor hygiene, drug abuse and alcoholism, Rock said.

“A lot of the kids are malnourished, so when they get sick, they tend to get sicker,” said Dr. Claudia Vellozzi, La Amistad’s medical director. Because they are poor, Buena Clinton’s inhabitants rarely see doctors except for emergencies--they don’t regularly see physicians who can watch their development and monitor progress against chronic health problems, she said.

“This (facility) is for the people who fall through the cracks, the poor, the people with no insurance, without Medi-Cal or Medicare,” said Mark Headland, director of human development at St. Joseph.

Buena Clinton, a 39-acre neighborhood south of the Garden Grove Freeway that is bordered by Buena and Clinton streets, is filled with graffiti-adorned, substandard and overcrowded apartments occupied largely by Latinos, many believed to be illegal aliens. St. Joseph officials acknowledged that many residents there are fearful of outsiders, and that La Amistad will have to gain the trust of the community.

“They’re in a position where they don’t know who to trust,” Headland said. “But they are human beings. They are here and they deserve health care.”

The staff canvassed Buena Clinton months ago, knocking on doors and talking to the residents about the health care service they planned to provide. They received a positive response, Rock said.

However, she and others who had been working on La Amistad were disappointed Saturday morning to find that a second-story window had been shattered during the night by a thrown bottle that sprayed glass and beer inside a meeting room.

“We’ve been welcomed to the neighborhood,” Rock said while inspecting the damage. “One person said to me this (the nicely decorated building) shows respect for the neighborhood. I expected it to be reciprocated. At least, I thought that until I came in this morning.”

But as children ran to La Amistad’s building Saturday morning, clamoring for gifts and free refreshments with their parents following behind, officials said they believed that a friendship with the neighborhood was taking hold.

Beneath the broken window, Clavel told residents in Spanish that the health service belongs to the neighborhood, and that it is their obligation to protect it.

Inside, a sign informs visitors that no cash or narcotics are kept in the building, and that “what you steal from here, you steal from your own.”

So far, St. Joseph Hospital has spent about $93,000 on the lease, renovations and furnishings, and expects to spend at least $100,000 more on staff and medical costs by the end of the first fiscal year, Rock said.

Patients will be charged a nominal fee, about $5 to $10, depending on their income, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds, she said.

“I’d rather have them fix the window first,” she said wryly.

Rock said St. Joseph Hospital and the Sisters of St. Joseph, located in Orange, became interested in helping Buena Clinton after reading newspaper stories detailing its housing, crime and health problems.

“These are people in a contained area with a terrible problem,” she said. “We thought we would come in where we (could) really help. The needs here are so well defined.”

There are an estimated 7,000 people living in Buena Clinton, a neighborhood designed to hold 3,000, so La Amistad is bound to be busy, Rock said.

In fact, Garden Grove city officials are concerned that the neighborhood health service may attract even more people to Buena Clinton, she said. La Amistad officials have promised to track patient addresses and notify the city if more than 15% of the patients are from outside the area.

In addition to treating ailments, La Amistad will offer lessons on health issues, such as prenatal counseling, infant care, proper maintenance of sanitary facilities and even English. Language is definitely a health-related subject for Spanish-speaking people who go to emergency rooms but are unable to communicate their medical problems, Rock said.

Vellozzi, the medical director, said she is looking forward to becoming Buena Clinton’s neighborhood doctor because “I want to work with people who don’t have a lot of opportunities.”

Trained as a family-practice physician, Vellozzi had been director of Western Medical Center’s “urgent care” facility but she contacted the Sisters of St. Joseph while trying to find help for a sick child she had treated in Tijuana. Soon after, she was offered the job at La Amistad.

“This is more of what I wanted to do,” she said. The poor are used to seeing a doctor only for immunizations or when a crisis arises, “real sporadic care. I’m a real advocate of continuity of care. I want to be able to establish a relationship with these people,” Vellozzi said.

La Amistad will receive its final inspection by Santa Ana building officials Monday. The building, located on the west side of Clinton Street, is technically in Santa Ana, although Buena Clinton’s residents live across the street in Garden Grove.

The health service will have an open house for the neighborhood the rest of this week before receiving patients on Nov. 11.

Rock noted that one St. Joseph doctor had criticized La Amistad for purchasing new medical equipment and furnishings.

“But I said, why would we have anything different, just because these people are disadvantaged?” she said. “I look at this as an extension of St. Joseph Hospital.”

Added Headland: “We are trying to make a statement that the poor don’t have to settle for second best.”