Rancho Los Amigos Foundation
by Lorine Parks
There’s a New Look on the campus at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehab Center, Executive Director of the Rancho Foundation Deborah Arroyo, told us. Pretty soon the iconic white Harriman building will be the only structure left to remind passers-by of former days.
Long a source of pride for the Downey community and a jewel of Los Angeles County’s Department of Health Services, Rancho is undergoing a $418 million renovation and campus beautification project.
After starting as the county Poor Farm, and then gaining fame as a polio center, Rancho now specializes in head and neck and spinal cord injuries, neurological damage, and diseases such as cerebral palsy.
On the south side of the Imperial Highway, the newest gleaming white building you see is the Wellness & Aquatic Therapy Center, which includes a new therapy pool, which will increase Rancho Los Amigos’ capacity to provide physical therapy.
Next to it and “absolutely in the middle of the campus” is the Jacqueline Perry Center, named for Downey’s famous orthopedic surgeon and world authority on gait analysis, a center for surgery, ICU’s and out patients. Beside them stands the Don Knabe Wellness Center with its lacy white filagree facade, named for the retired (term limits) County Supervisor.
Deborah heads the Rancho Foundation, which is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization established in 1983, to raise funds for programs, services and equipment for Rancho patients and their families. People can give directly to the Foundation to help the pediatric and adult patients.
“I love my job, “said Deborah, “and I love raising funds for support programs for the patients. Because many of our patients are different,” she went on, “they are patients for life.”
Be it a surfing accident or car accident, a fractured neck or broken bones,
Rancho rebuilds their lives. But some have so much neurological damage, and are so fragile, they cannot go home, also sometimes for financial reasons, or because no ramp can be built to their family’s dwelling to make it wheelchair accessible. Some of these “permanent” patients become staff members and work as volunteers, making life easier for their fellow patients.
Rancho develops the latest in robotics, so a paralyzed person can walk by means of a prosthesis which sends electrical signals instead of neurological ones to artificial limbs. “We do amazing stuff,” Deborah says. “We work side-by-side with community members, patients, Rancho staff, our volunteers, and our donors to make this a place where pediatric and adult patients throughout the country can come to experience the Restoration of Health, the Rebuilding of Lives, and the Revitalization of Hope.”
The “halo” is an outstanding early example of what has come out of Rancho. Dr. Perry was the inventor of the device, a complete metal ring with an overhead frame attached to a rigid full-body cast by three descending support rods which she developed in 1959 at Rancho with Downey’s Dr. Vernon Nickel. The ring is attached by metal or carbon fiber uprights to a full body cast which act as a jacket vest around the patient’s chest. All of the halo’s components work to immobilize the patient’s head and cervical spine.
At first, Drs. Perry and Nickel used their halo for the arthrodesis of the cervical spine in poliomyelitis patients and then with polio patients with paralytic cervical muscles who were unable to hold their heads upright. The upright head position was necessary to maintain a clear airway for breathing. The halo was also used for the post surgical treatment of scoliosis. Later the basic halo design was adapted to stabilize the cervical spine following trauma, tumor operations, and in the correction of congenital malformations.
Reducing the weight of the halo has always been a major goal behind design changes. Happily, today the use of modern materials and design features make the earlier halo look ancient. Many of the component design ideas have been contributed by artisans volunteering under the heading of the Foundation. Skillful local cobblers and machinists build feeding apparatus and special shoes.
Patients at Rancho Los Amigos have various socio-economic backgrounds and the support of the Foundation allows these patients to receive treatments and programs that are unfunded by insurance or are otherwise outside of the financial means of the patient.
The Amistad Gala is the biggest fundraiser of the year for the Foundation, and our Downey Rotary member Pat Gomez Pratt was Chair of the Foundation for many years. In her early days as a young hairdresser, she would go to Rancho on her free Sundays and style and curl the hair for the women patients. So there are many ways of volunteering.
The Rancho Los Amigos Foundation provides private funding for more than 30 innovative Rancho patient programs, many of which are directed by former patients. Some of these programs include the Adult Visual Arts Program; and the Wheelchair Sports Program, which currently involves more than 40 patients in success-oriented, competitive wheelchair sports activities geared to patients with all degrees of disabilities. The program includes basketball, tennis, hockey, arena football, over-the-line, soccer, junior rugby and handcycling.
“I love Downey,” said Deborah. “It has a rich history and culture, and wonderful people. And I love telling about what we do at Rancho.”