Struggling Clinic Nears Its End

Facing mounting debts and a foreclosure sale of its two properties, a Bellflower clinic that served the county’s Native American community for nearly three decades seems certain to fold by the end of the year, staff and county officials said.

The American Indian Clinic, the county’s only free clinic that targeted Native Americans, owes creditors hundreds of thousands of dollars, and its finances are in disarray.

The clinic’s Bellflower property and its Compton Main Artery site, where it ran the county’s only residential substance abuse treatment program for Native Americans, are scheduled to be auctioned Dec. 30.

Allegations of embezzlement and mismanagement have spread with news of the clinic’s financial tailspin, and state and county investigators are reviewing some of the claims.

But observers and workers at the clinic and rehab center also acknowledge that their troubles may stem from another problem. They say that in recent years, the facilities, which emphasize traditional aspects of tribal mores, struggled to attract the latest generation of young American Indians, a generation who grew up in the city, far from the traditions of reservation life.

Los Angeles County is home to an estimated 61,000 Native Americans--the largest population in the country outside the reservations, according to a spokesman from the Indian Health Service. Prompted by the government’s national relocation effort, thousands poured into the county from reservations during the 1950s and ‘60s. They left behind friends and family. And they left behind health services.

In the early 1970s, as authorities grew more concerned with high alcoholism rates, the federal government and local agencies injected funds into programs targeting the growing urban Native American communities. The clinic is one of the few that survived cutbacks in the 1980s.

Since the doors opened in the 1970s, thousands annually sought dental and health treatment at the clinic and rehab center. For clients and staff, like Michael Rafael, the facilities offered more than just medical relief.

“The program gave me a great sense of pride and connection with my heritage,” said Rafael, who arrived at the Main Artery in 1978 for its alcohol recovery program and later returned as a counselor. Of its imminent closure, he said: “I’m still in denial.”

Southern California Bank, to which the clinic owes about $80,000 in mortgage payments, is selling the properties. But the growing line of creditors extend well beyond the bank.

The clinic owes tens of thousands of dollars to staff and suppliers. Property taxes are long overdue, and county officials say they have not received an accounting of $170,000 given to the clinic in advance funding.

County officials have promised that funds for the clinic and the Main Artery will remain earmarked for Native American health services, but the turmoil surrounding their fate has taken a toll on clients.

Weeks before he was due to graduate from the Main Artery, a subdued Gorman Brenner recently gathered his belongings and told staff that the upheaval distracted him from his daily fight with alcoholism.

“I can’t focus on my program anymore. I’m discouraged,” said the 30-year-old Quechan Indian, one of the last clients to abandon the program.

With the air thick with the smell of ceremonial burning sage, Brenner said goodbye and returned home to his reservation near the Arizona border. As Brenner left, a coalition of staff and supporters called a news conference at the Main Artery to publicize the clinic’s plight.

In a courtyard dominated by the Main Artery’s sweat lodge--a willow dome used for purification ceremonies--the group accused the clinic’s executive director, William Beckley, of embezzling funds.

“What happened to all the money that was here?” asked Cecilia Bachicha, who called herself a concerned citizen. “There’s something very wrong.”

Adding fuel to the allegations is the fact that Beckley is a native Hawaiian and not an American Indian. Beckley’s critics have taken their complaints to the Attorney General’s office, where a spokesman said investigators are reviewing the allegations.

But Beckley denied any wrongdoing and said he has forgone much of his salary during the financial crisis. He said he has desperately tried to keep the clinic open.

“Since the 1970s, there has been a lot of love, a lot of effort put into this. I don’t want to give that up,” he said, noting that he is asking for community support and he has recently submitted bills to the county for past services that he hopes may save the clinic.

County officials who are reviewing the clinic’s books have found nothing to confirm the most serious allegations, according to John Schunhoff, who oversees operations of county health contracts.

“Nobody has given us any evidence yet to show any criminal wrongdoing,” Schunhoff said. “It appears from the evidence so far to be just a very badly managed agency.”

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Many of the clinic’s management troubles predate Beckley’s arrival in 1995. In 1996, the clinic lost its contract with the Indian Health Service because of a repeated inability to show that it spent funds correctly, a spokeswoman for the federal agency said.

When it won a smaller funding contract with the county, the clinic made painful cutbacks in services, Beckley said. The Main Artery, critically in need of renovation, put repairs on hold.

But regardless of funding, the clinic was increasingly having problems attracting clients from the county’s Native American community, the staff said. With the population spread thinly throughout the county, a trip to Bellflower was too far for many. Less than half of the clinic’s recent patients are American Indians, Beckley said.

In past years, the Main Artery’s program was crammed with urban residents. But recently, the center came to rely heavily on the reservations for clients.

This year, barely a tenth of patients were urban Native Americans, according to Ron Hendrickson, the Main Artery’s program coordinator. The traditional Indian ceremonies emphasized at the Main Artery repelled many of them, he said. “We wanted to keep the program traditional . . . but it just wasn’t cool to them.”

Today’s young Native American adults, the children and grandchildren of American Indians who arrived decades ago, simultaneously feel a connection to their heritage but removed from many tribal traditions, said David Rambeau. He runs the United American Indian Involvement, a center that operates an American Indian health referral service in downtown Los Angeles. Many second- or third-generation urban American Indians feel intimidated by the unfamiliar traditions emphasized at the Main Artery, Rambeau said.

“There are a lot of people who do not want to be involved with Indian stuff like that,” he said. “They would rather go to a program that is not Indian because they know how to function there.

“You’ve got to progress with the times.”

Meanwhile, as the sale date approaches, the county has suspended its contract with the Main Artery and the clinic has slashed services.

In Bellflower, the doors to the primary care center remain closed. In Compton, the rooms at the Main Artery’s recovery program are empty.