Phoenix House
How I wish the Lake View Terrace families wrenched by drug abuse could have joined me last summer at the Phoenix House rehabilitation center in Orange County (Part I, May 27).
As an interim volunteer in the Nancy Reagan Center fund-raising effort, I researched long-term success rates and verified that prestigious nonprofit Phoenix House ranked among the best. But most convincing was the time I spent with the enthusiastic participants at the Santa Ana facility. They are clean-cut, clear-eyed testimony that the Phoenix House program works.
For Lake View Terrace to be elated over the center’s defeat in their community is sad but conceivable. But for their city councilman, Ernani Bernardi, to call it “a victory” is sad and unconscionable.
Phoenix House will no doubt take its outstanding program elsewhere now. What a loss for Los Angeles County.
ANN FULTON
Malibu
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