Helping the Healers : Medical Assn. Aids Doctors Whose Offices Were Burned in Riots

Dr. Gerald Fradkoff cannot walk a block near his old offices without someone hailing him or reaching out to reassuringly squeeze his arm.

“Hey Dr. Fradkoff, when are you coming back?” asked Barbara Long, 50, the resident of a nearby hotel who speaks fondly of the “kind” doctor who took care of her leg when it ballooned up from an animal bite.

It’s a question Fradkoff would like to be able to answer. But right now he does not even own a stethoscope. His second-floor medical clinic was one of the casualties of the riots, burned when looters torched a group of stores at Western Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard.

Fradkoff is one of at least six doctors who lost offices, medical equipment and thousands of patient files in riot-related fires, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Assn., which is trying to get the doctors back in business. The association estimates that more than 20,000 adults and children--most of them poor--depended on these doctors and have lost their services as well as their medical records.

“We’ve been getting calls from patients who say: ‘My daughter’s about to enter school. We can’t get proof of her vaccination because the doctor’s office burned,’ ” said Tom Thompson, the medical association’s communications director. “Others need prescriptions for heart medications and can’t locate the doctors to get them.”

Fradkoff’s office, called the Western Avenue Family Medical Clinic, was located in a Hollywood neighborhood of new Central American and Armenian immigrants. So far, the association has confirmed that the offices of at least five other doctors were destroyed: Dr. Chang Ha Kim at 3820 Crenshaw Blvd., Dr. Michael Mahfouz at 2651 S. Western Ave., and the McMahon Medical Clinic, a 20-year fixture in Los Angeles near USC. The McMahon Clinic was run by three doctors--Dr. James T. McMahon, the founder; Dr. Robert A. Bitonte and Dr. Richard S. Niemeyer. Among them, they treated about 5,000 patients a year, McMahon estimates, for everything from knife and bullet wounds to routine pediatric checkups.

A sad outcome of the situation is that these doctors treated the most needy in their communities. If the patients had health insurance, it was usually Medi-Cal, the government program for the poor that doctors in wealthier areas often refuse because it pays too little.

“In many ways, these doctors operated at the level of free clinics,” Thompson said.

Monroe Brooks was one patient who found help at the McMahon Clinic, driving up from his home in Hawthorne because he liked the doctors and the caring atmosphere of the clinic.

“Those doctors were very smart and very good to the community,” he said. “When people couldn’t afford medicines, they would give them free samples. They helped people a lot.”

Fradkoff, 57, worked with the same dedication, people in his neighborhood say.

Deborah Scholl, who runs a nearby translating business, said she often referred new immigrant families to him. She learned later that he never sent many of them a bill.

The staff at Western Medical Pharmacy on Santa Monica Boulevard got used to phone calls from the doctor, asking that they not charge certain patients for prescription drugs. Fradkoff would pick up the tab for whatever the pharmacy could not give away, said pharmacist Michell Kwon.

Fradkoff said he has earned “spiritual rewards” treating the poor that he was not able to find working in more profitable settings. But the choice to forgo material riches is jeopardizing his chances of returning to the neighborhood.

He owes $60,000 on a Small Business Administration loan that enabled him to equip the offices that were destroyed. Although he has found space to rent nearby that could be converted to medical offices, each day brings financial hurdles that make him hesitate.

The medical association is working to reassure him and help with those financial burdens. Fradkoff says gratefully that some of the association’s staff have “been like brothers to me.”

One of those “brothers,” Thompson, has been working with state Medi-Cal officials to get Fradkoff paid for five months of billings that he never mailed and were destroyed in the fire. Thompson has also contacted the county Department of Health Services and various city agencies to speed regulatory processes necessary for Fradkoff, Kim and the McMahon Clinic to relocate. Mahfouz has offices in other locations as well, so he has been able to continue working, Thompson said.

Meanwhile, Direct Relief International, a Santa Barbara-based medical charity that helps equip clinics and hospitals in the Third World, has agreed to supply the doctors with examining tables, X-ray machines and anything else they need.

Direct Relief has never worked so close to home, its president, Ann Carlos, said. But a meeting with medical association representatives and a tour of the riot-damaged neighborhoods persuaded her to hold an emergency board meeting to authorize assistance.

“What we saw was very similar to what we see in Third World urban settings,” Carlos said. “I had a real experience of deja vu. “

Fradkoff is preparing a wish list and says he is more inclined to rebuild than when he first watched television reports of his clinic in flames.

On that day, he told his brother, Ron, that he would never return to Hollywood. Ron Fradkoff, an accountant, was delighted. For years he had been trying to persuade Gerald to move to a safer and more lucrative medical practice in the suburbs.

But last week, in a coffee shop near the charred wreck of his clinic, Gerald Fradkoff frustrated his brother once again. “I have to stay in this community,” he told him firmly. “This is where my patients are.”