Beginning of the End : Move to Costa Mesa Starts Shutdown of State Hospital

CAMARILLO — John Chase hoped this day would never come.

Since learning that Camarillo State Hospital was in danger of closing, and that his daughter could be uprooted from her home of 35 years and shipped somewhere else, no one fought harder to keep the institution open.

It was a fight to save something special, Chase said, to preserve a place where his daughter had found her way and flourished. But it was a fight that for him all but ended Wednesday morning outside a sun-bleached, Spanish-style building known as Unit 88.

That is where Pam Chase and the 28 other developmentally disabled patients on that unit were loaded into vans waiting to shuttle them to a new home two hours away in Costa Mesa.

It was the first large-scale move out of the state hospital, which is scheduled to close this summer.

Citing the facility’s dwindling patient population and its spiraling costs, Gov. Pete Wilson last year ordered the shuttering of the state institution by June 30.

While hundreds of patients remain at Camarillo State, waiting their turn to transfer to other facilities, the departure of Unit 88 ushers in a new reality for the aging sanctuary, one that pushes it well into its final days.

“I hate to admit it, but it certainly does appear to be the end,” said Chase, who along with other parents waged a legal battle aimed at blocking the patient transfers and sparing the hospital from closure.

“It’s a real shame,” he added. “Every time I think about it, I just get sick.”

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No group of Camarillo State patients has been together longer than those on Unit 88. Some patients have shared the hospital ward for decades.

Together they have celebrated birthdays and holidays, bonding as friends and becoming like family.

And together they traveled 91 miles Wednesday to the Fairview Developmental Center, where they started new lives in a new home deep in the heart of Orange County.

The transition was fraught with turbulence. To be sure, it is a huge undertaking just to move so many people and all their belongings, all at one time.

But there was more to it than that.

Teary-eyed hospital workers traded hugs with their clients, letting them know they would be missed.

Some clients clutched stuffed animals as they shuffled through an iron gate that guards a courtyard behind the old hospital unit. One man said he didn’t want to leave, prompting workers to gather around, first to calm him and then to help him out the door.

Most patients seemed to take it all in stride. But staff members said it was hard to tell how many knew they were leaving for good.

Only time will tell how they get along in this new place, away from their routine and the people they know best.

“It broke my heart when they left this morning,” Lauri Leach, who worked on Unit 88 for six years and accompanied the patients to Fairview to help them get settled, said Wednesday. “These guys are like family. It was really hard to say goodbye.”

Largest Wave of Transfers

Across the sprawling state hospital campus, such scenes are likely to play out over and over as the 60-year-old institution empties out room by room, unit by unit.

This year nearly 300 patients have left the state hospital, dropping its overall population to 421.

Last week marked the beginning of the largest wave of transfers, with more than 60 patients scattered to other facilities over a three-day period. Another 30 are scheduled to leave Camarillo this week.

The bulk of those who left last week are mentally retarded clients funneled to Fairview, a developmental center that has had its own share of controversy.

A class-action lawsuit filed in March on behalf of about 800 disabled adults at the facility alleges that residents are being moved from the institution into inadequately supervised group homes, sometimes resulting in injury or death.

The lawsuit was initiated by Dr. William Cable, Fairview’s chief of medical staff, who filed a federal lawsuit earlier this year, alleging that he was retaliated against for objecting to such community placements.

Fairview officials said they could not comment on the pending legal cases. But they said those actions will have no bearing on patient transfers to the facility, where 105 former Camarillo patients already make their home.

In addition to the developmentally disabled clients who transferred last week, several mentally ill patients also moved to other state facilities or community care programs.

Oxnard resident Leo O’Hearn removed his schizophrenic son, Steven, from Camarillo State on Wednesday, placing him in a program close to home rather than allowing him to transfer to a state facility 80 miles away.

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Steven O’Hearn arrived at the state hospital two decades ago. On Wednesday, he was the last to leave his unit, now a shell of the place that helped pluck him from a world of delusion and hallucination.

“It was good while it lasted. It provided the care he needed,” said the elder O’Hearn, a retired lawyer who moved from Northridge to Hollywood Beach to be near his son. “But now to cut the cord completely, that’s a pretty hard thing to accept.”

O’Hearn, 71, is among the parents who fought to keep Camarillo State open.

He still clings to some hope that at least a portion of the hospital campus will be set aside to treat those patients with families in the immediate area.

He knows it is a longshot. But right now, it is the only shot he has.

“These are pretty despairing developments,” he said. “You could assume in the past that there would at least be a place for people like my son. But not anymore. The state is doing away with all that.”

What the state is doing is facing a new reality of its own.

The closure of Camarillo State reflects a nationwide trend toward community care programs rather than the mass warehousing of patients in hospitals and institutions.

It also reflects a change in California policy, spurred by a class-action lawsuit that forced a sharp reduction of patients in the state’s developmental centers and the spending of millions of dollars more for services for those who live outside institutional care.

Finally, it reflects Camarillo State’s dwindling patient population and the high cost of caring for state hospital patients, about $114,000 a year per patient at the Camarillo facility.

“All of those reasons are what drove us to recommend Camarillo for closure,” said Doug Arnold, chief deputy director of the Department of Developmental Services in Sacramento.

Arnold points out that Camarillo not only had a declining population but had fewer developmentally disabled and mentally ill patients than any other state facility.

Moreover, he said, programs and services offered at Camarillo will continue to be available to patients wherever they go.

“We have attempted, I think, to take into account all of the parents’ concerns,” he added. “We do understand their anxieties and have attempted to deal with them the best we can.”

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That is of little comfort to Marcie Flannery, whose 58-year-old son, Page Dye, was sent to Fairview on Tuesday after living nearly half his life at Camarillo.

He was among the first patients on his unit to move out. Hours before he arrived at Fairview, Flannery was already there, speaking with caseworkers and the director of the program where her son would be housed.

It was not an easy time. Her eyes were red and swollen because she had been crying a good part of the morning. She was weak, wrung out with emotion. Her hands shook as she tried to put words to her fear and her anger.

“I am desperate. I am a desperate mother trying to keep my son safe,” she explained. “This whole thing stinks. But this damned situation I can’t do anything about. I can’t reach anybody. I’m hurting for him and I’m so helpless.”

Fairview staff members did their best to calm her fears. They said they understood that it was a difficult situation, but they intended to provide the best possible care.

“We are going to do everything we can to make this a successful transition for you and for Page,” program director Jerry Savage told her.

Flannery left that day without seeing her son, not wanting to upset the transition. But she was back the next day. When he saw her, he ran over and delivered a giant hug, nestling his head deep in her bosom.

“I do believe that once he settles in, he’ll be happy,” she said. “I just want to get him through this.”

A Warm Welcome

For people who thrive on structure and routine, change does not come easily.

That is why the parents of patients on Unit 88 fought so hard to ensure that the entire ward--these longtime friends and extended family members--would be able to transfer together.

When those patients showed up at Fairview on Wednesday, they were met by dozens of parents who had arranged a picnic to welcome the new arrivals. Stacks of pizzas and buckets of soda were laid out in a courtyard behind their new second-story hospital unit.

Fairview staff members circulated among the clients, getting to know their new charges. The shrieks and howls of excited patients echoed through the courtyard.

Lisa Luban, 41, a 20-year resident of Unit 88, practiced the art of spontaneous hugging, embracing anyone within reach.

Jennifer Campbell and her father, Andrew, ate lunch together on a picnic table under an umbrella, a yellow balloon bobbing above their heads, whipped by a cool ocean breeze.

Jennifer’s life story is a case study of why many parents fight to keep their children in state institutions and out of homes in the larger community. When she left Camarillo for a board-and-care home in the mid-1980s, she was a fit 130-pound Special Olympian prospering at the state hospital.

When she returned in 1989, she was a skeletal 95-pounder who could only jabber and scribble incoherently.

With the hospital’s help, she has nearly returned to her old self, although she has had some setbacks along the way.

For Andrew Campbell, the move to a new place is not particularly troubling. He is more concerned about the quality of care once she gets there.

“That’s where Camarillo did so much. She just blossomed there,” he said. “Now the state of California decided to close Camarillo, and I don’t know what I can do about that. But this institution, I believe, has the same standards and the same level of skill as the one she came from. That’s what matters most.”

Up on Unit 24, patients and parents were busy unpacking. The unit is a long, narrow hallway with rooms off to each side. With so many people trying to move through at once, and workers carrying in truckloads of boxes shipped down from Camarillo, sometimes there was hardly room to walk.

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John Strauss and his son, Andy, waited at one end of the hallway where doctors were giving physical exams to new patients. Andy had been at Camarillo for 22 years and was preparing to enter a community care program when he suffered a broken ankle and had to put those plans on hold.

“It’s stressful, but we’re getting through it,” said John Strauss, one of many hospital advocates who regularly showed up at court hearings in Los Angeles as parents tried to win a court order blocking the closure.

“I hoped it would draw attention,” he said. “But it’s so hard to turn back the tide. Nobody cares to look at this. It’s not pleasant to look at. It’s not pleasant to know.”

The rest of the day was devoted to transforming the sterile hospital unit into a place that felt like home.

Karleen Allen brought new quilts and pillows for her daughter Judy, who had been at Camarillo for three decades, and each of her new roommates. Down the hall, John Chase and his wife, Barbara, helped Pam settle into her new room.

They hung family pictures and filled her closet, piling in clothes and shampoo and a plastic container jingling with bracelets. Pam chattered away, helping to arrange items and asking where things should go.

When it was time to leave, John and Barbara Chase hugged their daughter and promised to return soon.

Now that moving day had come and gone, they hoped that Pam and all the others would settle in without too many problems.

“We’re just keeping our fingers crossed,” John Chase said. “As difficult as it is to leave your child to a somewhat uncertain and unknown future, this is the best we can provide for her.”

Photographer Alan Hagman contributed to this story.