Noted Hospital’s Serenity Becomes a Gang Casualty : Health care: The spinal-injury ward at Rancho Los Amigos is overwhelmed by victims of urban war.

At first glance, the sprawling Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center in Downey seems serene, with its old Spanish-style buildings framing 210 acres of courtyards, manicured lawns and eucalyptus trees.

Inside, however, Los Angeles County’s largest rehabilitation hospital has become a reflection of inner-city turbulence, from the graffiti on waiting room walls to the blue and red clothing worn by a new breed of wheelchair-bound and bedridden patients.

Long renowned for its care of polio patients and traffic-accident victims, the county-run hospital is now being overwhelmed by invalid and indigent gangbangers.

“It’s such a wasteful carnage,” said Dr. Courtney W. Woodworth of Rancho’s intensive care ward, “and I think it reflects our self-destructive nature as a species.”

Although much of the attention surrounding the escalating urban warfare has been on those who have died, the reality is that far more gang members are being wounded--by a margin of as much as 10 to 1, authorities say. And the vast majority of the maimed are sent to Rancho Los Amigos for rehabilitation.

Treatment costs as much as $1,400 a day and lasts up to 6 months, and taxpayers typically pay the bills through Medi-Cal, Medicare and Los Angeles County revenues.

Psychologists and social workers at the 400-patient facility have learned that antisocial personalities do not always change after disabling encounters with violence.

“Even after their injuries, they try to latch onto their gang colors as though that’s all they’ve got left,” physical therapy technician John Barr said. Once, he added, “I saw paraplegic gang members fighting in the parking lot in their wheelchairs.”

To cope with the tensions, hospital officials have been forced to adapt.

Among other measures, the hospital gives aliases to patients in danger of being tracked down by enemies. The hospital also screens “homeboy” visitors, bolts the doors at night and prohibits patients from wearing their colors.

“We have a certain number of patients--thank God not a large number--whose behavior is so threatening and dangerous that we’ve had to segregate them from other patients,” said hospital ombudsman Bill Saar. “We do a lot of bed juggling to separate the gangbangers in here.”

Hospital officials, to soften the shock, often give prospective patients a tour and caution them that many of those undergoing rehabilitation are suffering from knife and gunshot wounds. So far, they maintain, the county hospital’s business and reputation has not been hurt by its mandatory acceptance of indigent victims of violent crimes.

Still, the environment can be unnerving for patients disabled by such accidents as falling off a ladder.

“You get a guy who has never seen a gun and he’s in a room with three or four gangbangers, well, he’s really intimidated,” Saar said.

Sally Duran, who has been a therapist at Rancho for four years, has seen a lot of boys pass through the place, many facing a future of pain and struggle. In July, her 15-year-old son became one of them.

He was shot in the back by a rival gang while he was standing alongside a lunch wagon on a Norwalk street.

“I used to come to work and think, ‘Thank God it’s not my kid’--then it happened to me,” Duran said. “It was harder for me than other people because I knew from experience what my son was going through--the hate, the depression, the anger. Now, I’m closer to my patients and their families because of it.”

“Gangs aren’t worth it,” conceded her son, Peter Moreno, who has lost the use of his legs. He nodded at four other nearby gunshot victims and added: “These are my homeboys now.”

Rancho psychologist Lisa Golden compared the mental stresses faced by badly injured street fighters to the “post-traumatic stress syndrome” suffered by soldiers and rape victims.

“They have flashbacks and nightmares,” said Golden, who received her training in veterans hospitals. “They hear a loud noise and they jump. I have to tell them such behavior is natural, they are not crazy. . . .

“My initial concern is whether a guy is so depressed that he is going to kill himself or someone else--or if someone is going to come in and kill him,” Golden said. “Changing from well to sick in a moment--and in the context of violence--is a heavy onslaught that affects their ability to cope with and adapt to a loss of hardness, toughness and fighting ability.”

On the streets, David Gilmore was known as one of the toughest. He went by the name “Gangster,” and said he “grew up like a guy on television--the bad guy.” Gilmore dreamed of becoming a professional boxer until last March, when a bullet fired from a passing car lodged in his spine.

In the time it took him to hit the pavement, the 21-year-old, 225-pound man was rendered a quadriplegic.

His reputation for bravado and vengeance followed him into Rancho Los Amigos’ spinal-injury ward. There, a passel of homeboys visiting a rival gang member saw Gilmore, crowded around his bed and shouted: “We hate you! We can get you!”

Gilmore had a nurse put a telephone to his ear and dial a number for him. Soon after, 15 of his allies walked into the hospital, prompting officials to arrange a “peace conference” that only narrowly averted a gang battle in the ward.

Now, as Gilmore prepares to return home after seven months at Rancho, he has had a change of heart about his former life--unlike many of his friends who are “still gangbanging, even after what happened to me.”

Gilmore spoke of his conversion as he was being lifted off a therapy mat and into a wheelchair with the aid of a harness attached to a portable hydraulic lift.

“Dropping from the authority I had on the street to . . . having others put on my shoes and brush my teeth was devastating,” he said. “Now, I just ask forgiveness from all the people I ever brought harm to or hurt, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Still, he wears a cap emblazoned with the initial of his old gang.

The dramatic surge in victims of knife and bullet wounds at Rancho is only the latest shift in the types of patients served by the highly regarded rehabilitation facility since it opened in 1888 as a refuge for alcoholics and the homeless.

In the mid-1940s, it became internationally recognized for its treatment of polio victims. By the 1960s, victims of automobile, motorcycle and swimming accidents began to fill the hospital’s spinal-injury ward. Three years ago, those patients were eclipsed by people who had been shot or stabbed--a dramatic illustration, hospital officials say, of the escalating violence in barrios and ghettos throughout the county.

“As many as 300 people are admitted each year to our spinal-injury ward--at least 100 of them for gunshot wounds,” said Linda Wassmuth, service coordinator for the spinal-injury ward.

Roger Miller of El Monte was among them. He was shot six years ago with a .38-caliber pistol at close range after arguing with a stranger near his home.

“When I woke up three days later, it was nightmare city--I was a complete quad,” said Miller, who was 17 at the time.

Paralyzed from the chest down, Miller now makes his way around by pushing the oversize wheels of a hospital gurney with his arms.

“I’ve still got the bullet in my spine--they can’t take it out or it will mess me up more,” said Miller, whose wheelchair was recently stolen from his room--the equivalent of “stealing his legs,” as one hospital official observed.

As they do for other patients, the hospital attempts to rehabilitate gang members so they can learn to fend for themselves. Because most come from impoverished backgrounds, they face the daunting task of finding adequate housing and affordable medication, equipment and nursing services after their discharge.

“We really work our butts off to get these guys functional again and able to take care of themselves,” ombudsman Saar said. “We’ve been very successful in teaching even quads to function as independently as they can under the circumstances.”

But sometimes, he said, that is not enough.

“A lot of these people become placement problems. Who is going to take care of a guy paralyzed from the neck down and on a respirator 24 hours a day if Medi-Cal is his only funding?” Saar asked. “They tend to stack up in our facility because there is no place to send them.”

Those who are discharged may also find themselves surrounded by pressures that led to their injuries.

“For some reason, gang members regard these patients as heroes,” physical therapist Barr said, adding that sometimes “the gang members win their (the patients’) hearts and minds again, making our work a lot harder.”

Rogelio (Smiley) Lopez, 19, who was released from the hospital in October, was lucky enough to move back in with his family.

Shot 12 times by rival gang members “on a search and destroy mission” in his Eastside neighborhood in July, Lopez also was among the few to find a common bond with a former enemy, with whom he shared a Rancho room.

The roommate, a 17-year-old East Coast Crip, was shot and paralyzed from the neck down.

Said Lopez: “We became friends.”