White Memorial Medical Center

More than 200 clergy, business leaders and personnel from White Memorial Medical Center in Boyle Heights gathered Thursday to break ground on a $183-million main hospital building. The old structure will be torn down after the new 359-bed acute-care building opens in 2005. The new building, to be built next to the old one, is seen by hospital administrators and community leaders as a crucial part of the health-care safety net in the Eastside community.

Ampelio Garcia, 74, was barely able to walk when he got to White Memorial Medical Center in Boyle Heights, after the latest flare-up of a chronic lung condition that left him wheezing and gasping for air. Emergency room physician Brian Johnston prescribed drugs and a breathing treatment to open Garcia's airways. Then he admitted him -- for the second time in less than a week. "I can't send this guy home; there's no way," Johnston said. "And I don't think our treatment here is extreme or excessive.

Los Angeles City Councilman Gilbert Lindsay collapsed in the City Hall garage early Friday just hours before he was to greet Nelson Mandela, an aide said. The 89-year-old councilman was taken to a hospital, where his condition was later reported as stable. Lindsay's collapse was described by an aide as a fainting spell, which was blamed on a combination of excitement over the day's festivities, his skipping of breakfast and the recent spate of hot weather.

THE call came in just after 10 p.m. on a recent Monday. "Mike, we got a GSW." A gunshot wound. Mike Garcia hopped into his beat-up Mazda and drove to the emergency room at White Memorial Medical Center in Boyle Heights. He joined veteran nurse Eileen Powell beside a man on a gurney who had been shot multiple times at a local park. One of the bullets had shattered his thighbone into jagged halves just above the right knee. "Do we have any gang affiliation on him?" Powell asked Garcia.

THE call came in just after 10 p.m. on a recent Monday. "Mike, we got a GSW." A gunshot wound. Mike Garcia hopped into his beat-up Mazda and drove to the emergency room at White Memorial Medical Center in Boyle Heights. He joined veteran nurse Eileen Powell beside a man on a gurney who had been shot multiple times at a local park. One of the bullets had shattered his thighbone into jagged halves just above the right knee. "Do we have any gang affiliation on him?" Powell asked Garcia.

A Boyle Heights hospital will break ground at 2 p.m. today for the addition of a new cancer treatment center, a hospital spokeswoman said. The addition to White Memorial Medical Center will provide patients with the latest radiation therapy, said Alicia Gonzales, White Memorial spokeswoman. Because the hospital is undergoing renovations, the $110-million cancer center will not be completed until 2002, Gonzales said.

White Memorial Medical Center will offer a free diabetes forum Saturday in an attempt to raise awareness in the Latino community about the chronic disease. Dr. Jaime Davidson, clinical assistant professor at the University of Texas, will be the guest speaker. He will be joined by East Los Angeles physicians. About one-fourth of all people of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent between the ages of 45 and 74 have diabetes, doctors said. The forum will be held from 9 a.m.

A man in a stolen white Toyota Celica drove at about 20 m.p.h. into a group of police recruits jogging on Park Row Drive near the Los Angeles Police Academy Friday afternoon, striking several of the trainees before fleeing, authorities said. Two of the recruits were taken to White Memorial Medical Center, where they were treated for minor leg injuries and released, according to Officer Margie Reid, a Los Angeles Police Department spokeswoman.

Employees of White Memorial Medical Center will take off their lab coats and put on reindeer antlers today as they conclude a three-day goodwill tour of Boyle Heights neighborhoods, where they are giving away toys, clothing, and shoes to needy children. The 800 children receiving wrapped gifts are first-graders from area schools who wrote letters to Santa Claus in their classrooms. Teachers chose the neediest among the needy to receive the presents.

There were no gifts for Eric Lopez last Christmas as the 10-year-old boy lay near death after being hit by a car while riding his bike on a City Terrace street. Eric was not expected to live, but he survived. On Tuesday at the Los Angeles Police Department's Hollenbeck Division, he had more gifts than ever as family, friends, hospital workers and police celebrated his recovery.

California health regulators have cited White Memorial Medical Center for failing to properly sterilize a medical instrument later implicated in a deadly bacterial outbreak in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit. White Memorial, near downtown Los Angeles, closed its busy neonatal intensive care unit last month after identifying an outbreak of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which sickened five babies. Two of the babies are believed to have died as a result.

Excited about the birth of their first child, David and Lucina Marin already had decorated his nursery and prepared his crib when Lucina suddenly went into labor at 26 weeks. On Nov. 17, Lucina delivered her son prematurely at White Memorial Medical Center in Boyle Heights. The child weighed 2 pounds and was being treated for an immature lung but was expected to recover.

A premature baby infected by a virulent bacterium at White Memorial Medical Center died Monday morning, the second death believed to be related to an outbreak that forced the Boyle Heights hospital to close its neonatal intensive care unit to new admissions, hospital officials said. "What started out as the happiest day of my life a month ago has become the worst nightmare," the baby's father, David Marin, 45, said in an interview in Spanish. "We are heartbroken."

White Memorial Medical Center near downtown Los Angeles has closed its neonatal and pediatric intensive care units to new admissions after seven children became infected with a virulent bacterium, including one baby who probably died as a result, hospital officials said Friday. The Boyle Heights hospital shut its busy neonatal unit Dec. 4 after identifying an outbreak of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which is believed to have infected five babies.

More than 200 clergy, business leaders and personnel from White Memorial Medical Center in Boyle Heights gathered Thursday to break ground on a $183-million main hospital building. The old structure will be torn down after the new 359-bed acute-care building opens in 2005. The new building, to be built next to the old one, is seen by hospital administrators and community leaders as a crucial part of the health-care safety net in the Eastside community.

A physician accused of sexually assaulting four female patients was temporarily barred on Tuesday from practicing medicine and a Los Angeles Superior Court judge denied a motion to reduce his bail from $1 million. Dr. Arthur Mason, 34, of Stevenson Ranch, was arrested in January on charges he sexually assaulted two female patients, one at White Memorial Medical Center and another at a private medical offices on Cesar Chavez Avenue.

Officials at White Memorial Medical Center in East Los Angeles, who have been accused by county health officials of closing their emergency room to rescue ambulances without justification, said Wednesday that they were preparing to reopen just as health officials arrived for their spot check on Jan. 26. "We were completing a very busy period and preparing to reopen," they said in a prepared statement.

White Memorial Medical Center will unveil renovations to its emergency department during an open house Wednesday. The $2.3-million renovation includes a major-trauma room for emergency care, a relocated tomography machine for diagnosis of internal injuries, built-in X-ray machines and "negative pressure" rooms to reduce the spread of airborne communicable diseases.

Carmen Salinas knew she tempted every parent's nightmare when, after a baby-sitter suddenly canceled, she left her two kids with a stranger on a Hollywood street before rushing off to work. "Please, do you think you can baby-sit until I find someone else?" Salinas asked the startled woman while handing over her 2-year-old daughter and 6-month-old son.

"Return to Wellness," a program sponsored by the Wellness Community-Foothills, the Methodist Hospital of Southern California and the Susan G. Komen Foundation, will address the needs of people with breast cancer. Topics include sexuality and intimacy issues, nutrition, hormone replacement, physical fitness and lingering side effects of treatment. Methodist Hospital, 300 W. Huntington Drive, Arcadia. Free. Reservations (626) 796-1083.