LAGUNA BEACH : Public Seeks a Remedy to Aid Clinic

When a migration of hippies to Laguna Beach created the need for a free clinic in the late 1960s, Neal Purcell, then a police officer, wasn’t one of its biggest fans.

Today, Police Chief Purcell is among those working to save that financially troubled Laguna Beach Community Clinic, which serves people from all over Orange County.

A public meeting will be held Saturday at City Hall beginning at 10 a.m. to discuss ideas to raise money for the clinic. City officials called the meeting after they voted to forgive a $20,000 loan to the clinic, which has subsequently reduced its deficit from $60,000 to about $30,000, said Ronald Woelfle, president of its board of directors.

“We’re now trying to increase public awareness of what we do,” he said. “If I leave any legacy, it’ll be for the clinic not to face another crisis.”

Purcell, who has watched the clinic grow and change since it opened in 1970, said: “Hopefully, these talks will attract people from outside (of the city) to be supportive. A lot of people say, ‘Why does affluent Laguna Beach need a clinic like this?’ But this is a clinic for the entire area. I’d hate to see it fold.”

Purcell admits that he didn’t feel that way in the late 1960s, when thousands of young people came to Laguna Beach, seeking the mild weather and permissiveness associated with the renowned artists’ colony.

Venereal disease and drug overdoses were near epidemic then, Purcell said. So community doctors, dentists and church leaders proposed a free clinic.

Despite opposition from residents who feared that it would draw more hippies to the small seaside hamlet, the Laguna Beach Free Clinic opened in a converted two-bedroom-and-den home at 460 Ocean Ave.

“The town was inundated with hippie types, dopers and transients,” Purcell said. “That was the major clientele when it first opened.”

“I was not for it” then, he said. “I thought it would create more problems than resolve them. But now it would be sorely missed.”

Over the years, services were added to the original birth control and venereal disease services. Flu shots, dentistry, psychological counseling, a rape crisis and family violence unit and legal counseling werea added. A blood pressure clinic, school and work physicals and a prenatal care program were also included.

Purcell said the most noticeable shift came in 1975 when the clinic started serving the elderly, including people from Leisure World.

“Gradually, it started shifting from serving transients in Laguna Beach to all segments of the community,” he said.

Now, 11,000 people pass through the doors each year from as far away as Brea and Buena Park, Woelfle said. But the price of that service has been financial trouble for several years, he said.

In 1985, the clinic faced a $40,000 deficit and possible closure. The city then gave it an interest-free, $30,000 loan. The clinic changed its name to the Laguna Beach Community Clinic and began charging fees on a sliding scale.

“But we were still losing funding from the public domain,” Woelfle said. “We had a crisis a year and were literally on the doors of bankruptcy last October.”

Since then, the clinic has become “leaner and meaner, but not to our clients,” Woelfle said. “We’re doing more with less. We are much more efficient.”

Paid staff has been cut to 10 people, and more than 250 volunteers donate 35,000 hours a year, he said.

“And there are so many other things people can do,” Woelfle said. “We need volunteers for scheduling, the front desk and fund-raising events.”