However, Purcell said this week that he later came to realize the clinic provided a needed service and had become a first-class medical facility.
The clinic will be celebrating its 40th anniversary of service to the city at the annual Sunset Fiesta, a May 2 fundraiser at the Twin Points estate in North Laguna.
Support is needed now as it was when the clinic first opened its doors and its heart to the community.
The city was experiencing a virtual epidemic of hepatitis in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, due to needle exchanges and the influx of already infected folks, Purcell said. And the clinic addressed those needs.
One of the most valuable and lasting services the clinic offered was the recognition in the early 1980s that a mysterious virus that had cropped up worldwide and was devastating Laguna’s gay community must be contained, if not cured, by education and early treatment.
The clinic earned the reputation of leadership in the treatment of the virus that came to be known as AIDS, which is no longer a death sentence but still not curable. Free anonymous testing for HIV and AIDS began in 1988 and continues today.
Other pioneering programs included the first free prenatal care for low-income women in South County, offered in 1982.
All services were free until 1986 when the clinic was forced to adopt a sliding fee scale due to cuts in government grants and the name was changed to Laguna Beach Community Clinic.
However, the clinic’s mission to provide quality medical care to folks who would never otherwise receive it has never been compromised, despite a shaky beginning and often hard times.
