A Health Clinic on the Verge of Dying : Val Verde: A community may lose its medical care unless it can raise $68,000 for staff salaries at Samuel Dixon Family Health Center.

The 2,000 residents of Val Verde live in comparative solitude, their homes wedged into a small area of rolling green hills that seem to stretch on endlessly.

The town is so small that it has no school or gas station. The only business on the community’s two-lane thoroughfare is a convenience store.

“It’s peaceful,” says Edwin Brown, president of the Val Verde Community Assn.

But all is not peaceful in Val Verde these days. Leaders of the community north of Magic Mountain fear that after a crucial grant runs out in June, the town will lose its only medical clinic, the Samuel Dixon Family Health Center.

As a result, they are trying to raise $68,000 to prevent the clinic from closing. The Civic Assn. has scheduled a fund-raising Easter Sunday concert in a local park and is writing hundreds of grant proposals to ensure future funding.

Brown, a graduate of California Institute of the Arts 12 miles east in Valencia, says many CalArts students were welcomed in Val Verde in the 1970s when they could find no other affordable housing.

He is hoping that the alumni--many of whom are now successful artists--will show their appreciation by supporting the community in its time of need.

The problems began for the modest clinic, housed in a converted Sunday school building, when Santa Monica Hospital announced that it would stop supplying the doctors who visit three days a week and would withdraw a $68,000 annual grant for staff salaries. An official said the hospital decided to use the resources to treat growing numbers of poor patients closer to home.

And the situation got worse--temporarily--when a local minister put the church that houses the clinic up for sale. But last week, the church bishop told a local realty agent that the minister lacked the authority to sell the property. The next day, the minister took the church off the market.

But even if the church is not sold, the clinic’s survival is far from certain, cautioned Mike Gales, a physician’s assistant who has run the clinic for five years.

“We still need about $68,000 a year,” he said. “No one is coming forward with that kind of funding.”

From the 1920s to the 1940s, Val Verde served as an unlikely summer resort for middle-class blacks, but now it’s home to many low-income blacks, Latinos and Anglos. The clinic dispenses basic care and drugs for these residents, referring more serious cases to neighboring hospitals. The threat that those services would no longer be locally available has sent shock waves through the community.

“It’s a good clinic,” said Rosa Cuevas, 35, an unemployed housekeeper with no health insurance. Cuevas, who recently broke her leg, gets it checked at the clinic and takes her three children there for such things as colds, fevers and infections.

“Even if I don’t have a car, I can get there,” said Cuevas, who pays nothing for visits or medications because her income is below the poverty level. “And even if I don’t have an appointment, I can get in, and the doctor will treat me well.”

Celia Hill is a mother of two who has no health insurance and whose husband earns about $600 a month working irregularly in oil fields near Fillmore.

“It’s more for my babies “ she said. “We go at least every couple of months when the weather gets cold and the children get sick more often. When I was pregnant, I went for prenatal care. I’m pregnant now, so I’ll have to start going again.”

Gales said 20% of the 200 monthly patients are below the state poverty level, and 89% are entitled to reductions in the sliding fee scale of $11 to $35 per visit.

Clinic records show that the typical patient is a 19- to 30-year-old mother who never graduated from high school. She is ineligible for health insurance and gets nutritional counseling and food supplements for her children under a county program. She rents her home, where the one employed adult typically earns low wages.

Because many patients don’t own cars, they find it difficult to make the 12-mile trip to Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Valencia or the 17-mile drive to Olive View Hospital in Sylmar.

Dr. Daniel Slater, who is in residency at Santa Monica Hospital and is spending two days a week at the clinic this month, predicted dire consequences for patients if the clinic closes.

“I think these patients would become like any other low-income residents of Los Angeles County,” he said. “Most of them allow their health problems to linger and go untreated until they get so bad they need to seek medical attention at the only place they can find, which is the emergency rooms.”

The collapse of the clinic, he said, would “overload emergency rooms unnecessarily and contribute to the financial crisis in Los Angeles.”

The clinic is served twice a week by a medical resident from Santa Monica Hospital and once a week by a staff doctor. Even if the clinic finds funding to replace the hospital grant, visits from residents and doctors could cease. But Gales said that is not a problem.

“Physician’s assistants work under supervision,” he said, “and regulations state that you can do that electronically. The doctor does not have to be on site physically but can be available during office hours by telephone.”

The two-year physician’s assistants program that Gales attended at the USC Medical School is designed to provide medical care to under-served areas. Gales now runs the Val Verde clinic with a medical assistant.

“This is my normal attire,” Gales said recently, wearing a green, V-necked surgical scrub shirt, gray cotton pants and running shoes. “It’s casual, and I like that. People don’t look at you as an authority figure they can’t talk to.

“I’ve given prenatal care on children who are now going into kindergarten,” he said. “We get involved in the community by coaching baseball teams and by outreach. I really like that. . . . A little health education and a little preventative medicine goes a long way.”

Gales’ work at the health center was made possible 10 years ago when Rev. Samuel Dixon converted a small Sunday school building in his church into a lobby, three examination rooms and an office for the area’s predominantly poor population.

But Val Verde was not always the home to the underprivileged. In the 1930s and 1940s, developers promoted the rural area as one of the few spots where well-to-do blacks could vacation.

In the 1940s, black visitors could stay at a number of bungalow motels. In addition to churches and a general store, the community had a gas station, a post office, a dance hall and a large swimming pool. Local news was reported in the weekly Valverdian.

Later, many black residents moved out and were replaced by poor Latinos who worked in nearby oil fields and onion fields. More recently, the area has attracted young Anglos, who have discovered that for about $200,000 they can buy sizable new homes less than a half-hour from the San Fernando Valley.

On a recent day, Lacy Bergquist brought her daughter Roshene, 12, to the clinic. She waited for the results of blood tests to determine whether the tall, slender girl had mononucleosis.

Bergquist said she has a herniated disc, can’t work and doesn’t have health insurance. Her husband, a former shipping and receiving department worker, has just finished welding school.

“They take the time to examine us thoroughly, and they make sure we have the right medications,” Bergquist said. “He cares. These are very caring physicians. That is why we don’t want them to close down in June.”

A few blocks away, Anne Mutch, owner of the Val Verde Country Store, stood on the concrete floor behind her cash register, her hair in a pony tail and a rack of cigarettes overhead.

“We have a lot of low-income people here, and Dr. Mike is a wonderful person and doctor,” she said. “He gives 200% of his time. I have insurance, but I still go to him.

“One time, I fell down and cut my hand on a piece of glass and got blood poisoning and kept running a temperature. He gave me a tetanus shot and went so far as to give me his home phone number in case my temperature did not go down. How many doctors would go that far? I felt privileged and a little special.”