It May Be a City of Hope for Some, but Duarte Is No Tourist Town

Visiting from the Rocky Mountain village of Paonia, Colo., Karley Young was ready for a night in the big city.

“I’ve got three this time,” Young said, checking the labels on the movie videocassettes she was carrying. “I’ve got ‘Always,’ ‘In Country’ and ‘Steel Magnolias.’ They look pretty interesting.”

Young was hoping to avoid another empty night in Duarte, where she is visiting the community’s famous attraction: the City of Hope National Medical Center. Renowned as a cancer treatment and research center, the facility includes something even more unusual than its sophisticated bone marrow transplant and radiology units. It has a 40-unit motel and a campground.

Young, 33, checked into the motel May 15 to be near her son, Michael, 14, who is being treated for leukemia. She hasn’t ventured far since then.

“We watch TV and do search-and-find puzzles,” said Young, whose husband operates a tire shop in Paonia. “I window-shop and rent movies for Michael to watch. But there aren’t any attractions in Duarte--if there are, I haven’t found them.”

Duarte is certainly no tourist town. There are no theme parks or historic sites to attract visitors. There isn’t even an airport shuttle bus stop anywhere within its boundaries, about 18 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles.

But the City of Hope motel and campground are, sadly, booked solid. The hospital opened its first 20 kitchenette-equipped motel rooms in 1958. The motel was doubled in size three years ago. This year, the six-space RV campground was opened. There already is talk of expanding it. About a third of City of Hope patients are from out of state. Guests pay $30 a night for motel rooms and $5 for campsites. Since cancer treatment usually ranges from 40 to 180 days, few visiting families could afford to stay that long in conventional hotels, said Dr. Gerhard Schmidt, assistant director of the hospital’s hematology and bone marrow transplantation units.

“Having family members around helps patients not feel isolated or abandoned,” Schmidt said. Family members also are often crucial bone marrow and blood-component donors, he pointed out.

Patricia Ebbe, a clinical social worker at the hospital, said visitors also benefit from being close to patients. “They want to help, they want to be part of the process” during a loved one’s traumatic bout with cancer, she said.

Barbara Smith, 69, of Prescott, Ariz., and her 71-year-old husband, Wayne, have been living in their 22-foot travel trailer since arriving at the hospital campground three months ago to be with their son. Larry Smith, 46, of Corona, is being treated for lymphatic cancer.

“Other than the Presbyterian Church, the market and the videorental store, there aren’t many places to go around Duarte,” Barbara Smith said.

“We stick pretty close,” Wayne Smith added. “The purpose of us being here is to support Larry.”

Next door, Louis and Sally Gutierrez pulled up from Indio in their 23-foot motor home recently to visit his hospitalized sister. She quickly perked up at the sight of homemade enchiladas, prepared on their motor home stove and delivered to her hospital room.

“This is something that every hospital should do,” said Louis Gutierrez, 61. “I could spend $100 for a hotel, but after a night or so, we’d have to go home.”

Patient Lloyd Brown of Lonoke, Ark., said his mother, four brothers and two sisters have made separate trips to Duarte to visit him since he arrived late last year for a bone marrow transplant. He has moved into the motel room they use while he waits for clearance from doctors to return home.

“Having family with you helps, it sure does,” said Brown, a 27-year-old farmer.

A few doors away, the children of Jenny Chou, 43, of Bangkok, Thailand, have checked into the motel to be near their mother as she undergoes treatment. They’ve found Duarte something less than resort-like.

“This town?” asked Maggie Chou, 17.

“It’s boring,” offered Joe Chou, 14.

“We take a bus and go to the shopping mall on weekends,” Maggie said. “That’s about all.”

That brought a groan from Gordon Dill, manager of the Duarte Chamber of Commerce.

“They must be going to Arcadia to shop,” Dill said. “We don’t have a mall. But we tell everybody to ‘Shop Duarte--it makes good cents.’ That’s spelled c-e-n-t-s. It keeps the tax dollar home.”

And that’s what seven-square-mile Duarte mostly is, he said--homes.

“This is a bedroom community. When you talk about things to do in Duarte, there is a swimming pool. There’s a gym you could join. We don’t have a movie theater, but there’s a bowling alley.”

And six video rental shops.