Students Soothe Cuts and Bruises, Slings and Arrows

Raised in a Christian home in affluent Irvine, Jo Marie Janco’s parents instilled in her and her younger brother compassion for the poor.

“My parents are Christian and I’m Christian,” she said. “Love isn’t really anything unless you show it.... It’s too much to see this kind of pain without doing anything about it.”

When the private school girl and her family drove through Los Angeles and Santa Ana, it saddened her to see people who were homeless and were forced to beg for money.

Homelessness “has always bothered me since I was a little kid,” she said.

As a college freshman she found an outlet for her compassion two years ago when she volunteered for the UCLA Mobile Clinic Project.

Janco and about 15 other UCLA students trade Westwood each Wednesday for a Hollywood street corner where they provide basic medical care to the homeless through the 3-year-old clinic.

The students treat scrapes and bruises and check blood pressure. They hand out vitamins and antibiotics, and blankets during winter nights. When they come across homeless with serious diseases, such as HIV, the students put them in taxis headed for hospitals and clinics.

In May, Janco -- now a 21-year-old senior majoring in English and neuroscience, an aspiring doctor and the clinic’s treasurer -- received a humanitarian award that UCLA gives yearly to students.

The award recognized her for the clinic work and for raising $1,100 to put together 50 kits with blankets and other cold-weather items that she and fellow students passed out last winter to the homeless. The students say the weekly outings to Hollywood offer them a chance to develop their medical, social work and public health skills -- and practice personal convictions.

On a recent Wednesday evening, the arrival of the white van full of medical supplies and UCLA students livened up the corner of Sycamore Avenue and Romaine Street.

On the sidewalk, the students set up a triage area with chairs and tables. They pulled out dozens of patients’ files and put up curtains for a makeshift examination room. The homeless arrived for treatment or simply to say hello to the students they count as friends.

“They are compassionate and concerned,” said a familiar client, Cecilia Gibson, 43, who visits the clinic weekly. Gibson, a diabetic, has lived on the streets with her husband, Walter, for a year. At the clinic, the students check her blood-sugar levels. She has received pregnancy tests and blankets.

The students know her as “CC.” Gibson proudly talks to them about the area’s homeless teenagers, who affectionately call her “Mom.”

“They want to get to know you as a person, not just your illness,” Gibson said.

The UCLA volunteers take pride in their completely student-run clinic. Besides the medical care, they value providing an open ear to their clients.

“It’s so easy to find the good in people,” said Chris Moriates, 21, a premed student who grew up in Thousand Oaks. “A lot of these people, people don’t talk to them. Sometimes they talk and talk to us because people don’t listen to them.”

The clinic started after the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition -- which for years has fed the area’s homeless -- asked the university for help developing a medical component.

The clinic was developed in the mold of one that UC Berkeley students have operated for more than a dozen years.

The UCLA clinic runs on a $10,000 budget, mainly from university sources. Each year it attracts about 50 medical and public health graduate students and undergraduates.

Some of the students spend up to 15 hours weekly on leg-work such as buying medical supplies or visiting regular clinics where the students may refer their patients.

“This is more than a Wednesday-night thing,” said Moriates. “To run a free mobile clinic takes a lot of work.”

The students, from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, share a social consciousness about homelessness.

Ele Lozares, a 33-year-old neuroscience major, was once homeless herself.

She grew up in a middle-class family in the Bay Area. But in junior college she began using speed and, with her boyfriend, she ended up sleeping in warehouses around San Francisco.

“When I was on the street,” said Lozares, taking a break from treating patients, “I said that if I ever got out of that situation I would help people who were still in that situation.”

Janco, clipboard in hand nearby as she gathered information on new patients, would rather not be the center of attention.

But fellow students say that she does many of the day-to-day tasks -- including writing grant proposals. She also sank the $500 she got for her humanitarian award back into the clinic.

Her mother’s family, she says, once lived in a refugee camp after fleeing Vietnam in 1975. They started anew in Connecticut with the help of a church.

So, she feels fortunate that her parents, a computer consultant and an electrical engineer, built a comfortable life for her and her brother.

“If you have been blessed with greater opportunities,” she said, “you have an obligation to give back to the community who doesn’t have your blessings.”