No Treatment for a Minor Complaint

Helen Kalvin thought she was giving the folks at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center a good idea. Because so many patients at the Laguna Hills facility are elderly, why not put up a shelter to partially enclose the three benches in the center’s parking lot that otherwise are exposed to the elements? You know, like at a bus stop.

Her argument is that when you’re already feeling lousy or just plain feeling old, sitting in the sun or the wind or the rain -- even for five minutes while waiting for a tram to take you to the doctor’s office -- can be uncomfortable. And that’s not even taking into account what it does to your buns.

Kalvin, 85, says she first complained a couple of years ago to the medical center’s senior services office. The personnel were extremely polite and told her repeatedly her concern had been forwarded, Kalvin says. But nothing ever happened.

In recent weeks, Kalvin started getting the picture. She asked the people in the seniors office for the top dog at Saddleback. Told it was CEO Steve Geidt, Kalvin says, she left at least two phone messages with Geidt’s secretaries, also detailing her concerns and leaving her name and number.

She never heard back.

Now, I’m not the kind of guy to automatically stick up for someone with a gripe. We hear them all the time, and it’s hard to know which ones are legit. And, let’s be honest, some people just like to complain.

But what sold me on Kalvin’s story is that, somewhere in the midst of the non-activity or response to her request for cheap shelters for three benches, the center built a four-level parking garage for employees. Counting the rooftop, it can handle 611 cars.

Before giving you the med center’s answer, here’s Kalvin, more than willing to fill me in during my visit to her Laguna Woods home:

“I’ve been going to that medical facility for over 10 years now,” she says. “As you get older, you start going more often. I would go and park my car and then I’d hobble on my cane over to the little metal bench to wait for the tram, because it’s quite a walk.”

No complaint with the tram, she says. But the elements have begun getting to her. “The heat is very hard on me, as it is with many older folks.”

The July heat wave was brutal, she says, “but then in winter, the wind blows and if it’s rainy, then you have no protection. You can’t walk to the building -- it’s too far -- so you’re trapped on that bench.”

Some months after her crusade began, Kalvin saw construction crews start on the garage. “Then when I saw the edifice,” she says, “I thought, This simple little request that I’ve been making is just peanuts. If I had a hammer and nails, I could do it myself.”

A retired school psychologist who grew up just outside New York City, Kalvin doesn’t go down without a fight. She says she once pursued a case for 15 years in New Jersey that dealt with her mother’s inheritance. The mother of two children, she divorced her husband 16 years ago after 39 years of marriage.

That’s whom the medical center is up against, but spokeswoman Elisabeth Sezonov says there’s no fight. She says she heard of the issue only a week or so ago. Ditto, says safety and security manager James Lenthall.

A hospital bureaucracy is a fearsome thing, and there’s no reason to doubt them. Besides, Kalvin says, she told only two people about it -- someone near the bottom and someone at the top -- and figured her idea was nixed.

Lenthall describes Kalvin’s idea as “novel” and “something worth considering.” He says he’s never seen anyone waiting at the tram stop, noting that the tram also picks up people as it cruises the large parking lot. Nor, Lenthall says, has he ever heard a complaint about the absence of enclosed benches. Sezonov says the tram stops aren’t intended to be long waits, but conceded it could be five to 10 minutes.

Under a 3 p.m. sun, I waited at one of the benches last week for five minutes but left without a tram arriving. Sezonov asked if I got overheated, and I said no. However, as I told her, I’m not 85 years old and in need of a doctor’s visit.

As for the parking garage that got Kalvin’s goat, the two officials said the whole idea was to free up more parking space for visitors and patients. Mission accomplished, they say.

Sezonov says the center now is designing a canopy for the ramp leading into the medical tower building. If that gets done, consideration could be given to the benches, she says.

I realize it can go round and round as to who knew what and when. Did higher-ups ever hear Kalvin’s complaint? I can’t say for sure. Did someone at the hospital figure Kalvin would eventually quit griping about it? Who knows?

All Kalvin knows is that she went to the place where you’d expect to go with a problem. And, two years later, she still was waiting for a definitive answer.

I assume she deplores the sight of the parking garage, with its size and cost mocking her paltry request.

“The garage is totally magnificent,” she says. “I am so happy that the staff has got a place to put their cars in the shelter from the sun.”

I tell her I admire sarcasm, but she insists she’s serious. “I mean it. I’m not being sarcastic. When I’m being sarcastic, I’ll let you know.”