A 30-Year Story of Healing and Hope

Years ago I lived near the beach in a neighborhood that had a lot going for it.

The people-watching at Rose Cafe. The hot bread fresh out of the oven at Pioneer Bakery. The handmade tortillas at La Cabana, which I could walk to at 2 in the morning if I got the urge.

During all this imbibing, I never noticed the Venice Family Clinic at 6th and Rose. When I was offered a tour of the place recently, I had to ask where it was. Sometimes the best stories are right under your nose.

At some point, I plan to tell you about the clinic physician who has been treating victims of political torture for 20 years, or the psychiatrist who treats victims of human trafficking.

But today, let’s go with the story of Margarita Loeza.

More than 30 years ago, when the clinic was in its infancy, little Margarita was a regular. She had been born feet first, dislocated a hip on the way out and endured years of suffering. Her parents, Roberto and Graciela, had no health insurance, so the tiny, nonprofit Venice Family Clinic was a savior.

Three decades later, the clinic’s mission hasn’t changed, but demand for its services has exploded. With seven locations now, the clinic treats roughly 20,000 patients a year, and 77% of them have no health insurance.

You’d think the United States might get a handle on a problem decades in the making. But it only gets worse because medicine is about business, not health, and politics is about avoiding any heavy lifting.

In California, for instance, we elected a governor who promised eternal happiness and fantastic jobs -- all with no sacrifice by us. Now, here we are with another clean-up-the-mess ballot to decipher.

Once you figure out whether you’d like to pay another half-penny in sales tax so a cop shows up when you call, you can wrestle with whether to spend $750 million on children’s hospitals, and whether to approve a 911 telephone surcharge to reimburse doctors and medical facilities for the cost of uninsured patients.

As a child, Margarita Loeza was blissfully oblivious to the politics of healthcare. All she knew was that she was in pain, and the doctors at the Venice Family Clinic were there to help.

“She was 5 or 6 years old and she was wearing a brace,” says Margarita’s mother, who remembers crying once when the girl asked her to please remove it.

“Do you have pain in your leg too?” Margarita asked, seeing her mother’s tears. “When I’m older, I’m going to be a doctor, and I’m going to take care of you.”

Little Margarita got a pat on the head for such a fantastic dream. She was the eldest of five children in a one-bedroom house. Dad was a gardener, Mom was a cleaning lady, and medical school seemed out of the question.

But at 15 Margarita underwent surgery, and there were no more pats on the head.

“When doctors fixed my hip, I wanted to do that too,” Margarita says. “They were like heroes to me.”

With loans, scholarships, two jobs and her parents’ help, Margarita graduated from Occidental College. With more scholarships and loans, she went to medical school at UC San Diego.

Back home, her parents would tell near-strangers in the supermarket that their daughter was in medical school. When Margarita graduated several years ago, the party had to be held in a San Diego park.

“It was over 100 people,” Margarita says. “My parents invited everyone they ever knew.”

She did her residency in San Bernardino, then went into private practice while volunteering whenever possible at -- where else? -- the Venice Family Clinic.

In private practice, Margarita quickly grew tired of the “worried-well,” a term she uses for over-insured people who convince themselves they’re sick and demand referrals and tests they don’t need.

“They were like consumers we were trying to keep happy, rather than patients,” Margarita says.

At the Venice Family Clinic, she saw the opposite -- very sick patients who had put off going to the doctor as long as possible. Medical Director Susan Fleischman noticed that Margarita had a special touch with the clinic’s patients, and it made perfect sense. She had been one of them.

Three years ago, the clinic asked Margarita to quit volunteering and please take a full-time job on staff.

“It was $40,000 less salary” than her job in private practice, says Margarita, 36. “I told my husband, and I thought he was going to have a seizure.”

Margarita took the job; her husband has recovered.

I met her as she was finishing up with one patient and rushing off to see another. When she was able to sneak a break, I took her to lunch at the Rose Cafe along with Dr. Fleischman, who has been campaigning for Proposition 67.

That’s the medical reimbursement proposal that would increase your monthly 911 surcharge by less than the price of a cup of coffee. Some of the money would go to outfits like the Venice Family Clinic.

It’s a wacky way to pay for healthcare, I suggested, and Fleischman and Loeza agreed. But the clinic exists because of a public policy failure that has spanned many decades. So Fleischman does whatever she has to -- within reason -- to serve a growing population of sick people with few options.

Given the spirit of the place, it’s easy to see why the clinic now has 2,000 volunteers at its seven locations, including nearly 500 doctors.

It’s also easy to see why, when I asked Margarita Loeza if she’ll ever return to private practice, she shook her head.

“This is my family,” she said.