Conejo Free Clinic Fills Doctors’ Orders

It’s 5:30 p.m. and Diane Pettifor is in a bind.

Nearly a dozen patients are crowded into the tiny waiting room of the Conejo Free Clinic and the physician assistants scheduled to work are stuck in traffic.

Meanwhile, sick children fidget, a woman clutches her stomach and, despite the cold drizzle, a few patients wait outside.

At nearly 6 o’clock and with still no help in sight, Pettifor pinch-hits, grabbing a chart and jotting down the symptoms of two children with sore throats and bloodshot eyes.

Minutes later, the volunteer professionals--one fresh from surgery--arrive and the biweekly medical clinic is in full swing, seeing to patients at $10 a pop.

“It’s a bit of a zoo,” says Pettifor, an assistant to the clinic director. “But we get everything done.”

Today marks the 20th year that the Conejo Free Clinic in Thousand Oaks began providing inexpensive services to thousands of residents countywide who are too poor to buy private health insurance but not poor enough to qualify for Medi-Cal.

Two times a week, and sometimes three, volunteer physicians and nurses and other health professionals stop by after work and stay until every patient has been served. They help single moms treat children with fevers, work on injured construction workers’ sprained ankles and assist laid-off executives coping with stress-related ills.

Volunteer nurses take blood samples--which will be sent to a local lab at half the cost--testing for everything from the virus that causes AIDS to cholesterol levels.

And volunteer attorneys dole out advice at weekly clinics to people struggling with credit card debt or worrying about failing businesses. At monthly classes on family law, those stuck in failing marriages can even get a divorce in return for a $20 donation.

Last year, the clinic helped more than 2,000 people from throughout the county, a 14% increase over the previous year. About 1,200 of those came for medical reasons; the rest were seeking legal help.

For people like Leobi Luna--whose 6-year-old daughter has pinkeye and whose 4-year-old son is suffering from an ear infection--the clinic often means the difference between care and no care.

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Two weeks ago, Luna paid about $140 for both children to see a private physician.

But Jessica’s eyes are still inflamed, and Richard’s ears are getting worse. With only her husband’s income as an assistant manager at a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant, she can’t afford the fees again.

“I need to see the doctor so they can tell me what’s wrong with them,” she said. “But I don’t have enough to pay.”

When Sharron Baird, the executive director, opened the clinic in 1976 amid protests that it would supply local teens with birth control, she didn’t think it would last.

But, swept up by the free clinic movement of the 1960s--when informal drop-in centers for hippie youths were popping up in cities across the nation--Baird persisted, seeing the clinic through three locations until settling in at the current site at 80 E. Hillcrest Drive.

There was the same need for low-cost medical care then that there is now, she said.

Only today, her clinic, like others across the nation, have lost their reputations as magnets for drifters and runaways seeking quick fixes for venereal diseases and drug problems.

“Twenty years ago, I never thought we would still be here,” she said. “I thought that some government agency would take over, but it’s going the opposite way.”

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Indeed, such clinics have become family health care centers staffed by highly trained volunteers.

“Some impressions may date back to the 1960s when free clinics first started,” said Frank Dawson, a Thousand Oaks physician who has been volunteering at the center since 1978. “But we are a little bit more high-tech now. We do our best to provide the same kind of care they can get at a regular doctor’s office.”

Except for its small size, the clinic looks like any private physician’s office, with a waiting room full of magazines and children’s toys, a reception area and two well-equipped examination rooms.

The protests that greeted the clinic’s opening, Baird says, are a thing of the past.

Now community support for the clinic is overwhelming. Contributions from local groups feed its annual budget of $82,000 and keep the clinic supplied with another $150,000 in donations of equipment and supplies. The number of volunteers now numbers nearly 100.

County Supervisor Frank Schillo calls the clinic “a safety net for people in Thousand Oaks who couldn’t otherwise find medical help . . . and they are up to their necks in business.”

And even though a second health clinic, the Conejo Valley Family Care Center, opened two years ago, the free clinic is still going strong.

The clinic prides itself in turning away no one. When patients come who can’t afford even the cut-rate costs of lab work or HIV tests--$10 compared to a private physician’s $50 or more--the clinic absorbs the cost.

“We’ll treat anyone who comes,” says Pettifor. “We’d rather test them than turn them away because they don’t have any money.”

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That philosophy was good news to William Martak, a construction worker laid off around Christmas after suffering an injury in a car accident that left him unable to work.

When he discovered he didn’t qualify for Medi-Cal while receiving disability pay, Martak--a Newbury Park resident with two children--wasn’t sure where he could turn for help when he developed a strange rash.

“There is not a lot of information out there,” he said. “My income was cut by about half and I still have to pay my bills and child support. This is the only place I could find that will give you some kind of care.”

But free clinic care does have its drawbacks. For instance, Martak’s prescription was simple: hydrocortisone. Although well-stocked with samples donated by local hospitals and laboratories, there was none of the prescription-strength drug on hand this particular evening and Martak was referred to a drug store for an over-the-counter brand.

“We have to just go on samples and freebies,” said Dan Zimmer, a physicians assistant in general surgery at Kaiser-Permanente in Thousand Oaks. “So you just give them whatever you have. You improvise. Sometimes you just give them tincture and sympathy.”

To some--especially the sizable portion who never expected to find themselves at a free clinic--that caring attitude makes all the difference.

“We are at a point in our lives we never anticipated,” said a Thousand Oaks resident, who declined to be identified. “Our kids are all through college and settled, but we’ve learned, nobody knows what can happen.”

In the past year, her husband lost his $50,000-a-year job due to downsizing. The couple--who recently declared bankruptcy and found their house in foreclosure--have used the clinic several times.

“I went in there feeling very discouraged,” she said. “You expect them to treat you as badly as you feel, but everyone in there makes you feel so good.”