COSTA MESA : Free Clinic to Be Added to SOS Site

In twos and threes, the poor trickle into the Share Our Selves parking lot on the city’s edge, where they can get a bag of groceries and some money to tide them over for a while.

While SOS has settled into its new home at 1550 Superior Ave., it soon will see another change when its free medical and dental clinic relocates there from the Rea Community Center.

When the clinic opens Feb. 17, the clients will be able to see a doctor, pick up some medicine and get dental checkups as well as learn basic medical care and diet and health information.

The move marks the final chapter in the neighborhood uproar that forced SOS out of its Rea home and into a larger space in an industrial area. The neighbors and City Council agreed to allow the clinics to stay at the Rea center, which is in the heart of a residential area, for about 18 months after the rest of SOS moved. The lease expires this month.

In that time, the new clinic has taken shape from an empty warehouse that sits between the new SOS quarters and Garf’s restaurant.

The clinic will combine medical and dental services, expanding its space by 1,400 square feet and adding about 200 more patients a month to the current 1,400 patients served. The dental office will double from the present two chairs to four, allowing an extra volunteer dentist to see patients there.

“It’s going to be so nice,” administrator Jennifer de Lima said as she stood in the future waiting room of the new clinic. “The volunteers are really going to feel it, but it’s going to be nice for the patients. You don’t want them to feel that because they’re coming in for free care that the place should not be adequate.”

Although the new location is bigger and brighter than the renovated trailers used at the Rea Center, the trip to the doctor will be much more difficult for many to make.

“At the Rea Center, we are right in the middle of a big community. Even though a lot of our clients come from Santa Ana and take the bus, a lot of our clients who are here are now going to have to walk, and for some it will be hard to do,” de Lima said.

The families who come to see a doctor usually need immediate care, such as for a child’s ear infection, de Lima said. Many of the parents have jobs, but the jobs usually pay only minimum wage and do not include medical benefits. Many often do not qualify for Medi-Cal, she said.

“If you are sick today, you need to be seen today. There is no walk-in clinic even in Santa Ana, except for a pediatrics clinic. And so many of the others (clinics) go by appointment only and only have a small time for walk-ins,” she said.

Even if a sick child is cared for at a free clinic elsewhere, the prescription medicine is usually too expensive to buy, she said. To meet that need, the SOS board of directors has strongly supported free medicines and pays out a large portion of its budget for those prescriptions, de Lima said.

With the opening of the new clinic, she said she hopes that more hospitals will get involved in efforts to treat the poor before their illnesses become chronic and they wind up in the hospitals’ emergency rooms.