Final Chapter

CAMARILLO —  It is the silence that says the most about what has become of the old mental hospital.

On every ward, along corridors where the floors have been worn as smooth as glass by years underfoot, Camarillo State Hospital has grown dark and deserted over the past few months, as quiet and soulless as a graveyard.

The remains pile up behind sun-bleached buildings: rusted wheelchairs and broken office furniture picked clean by hospital workers whose final duty was to empty the last open units, closing them down one by one until the entire place was shuttered.

Sprawling courtyards, once green and bustling with people, are now overgrown and weed-choked, withering to patches of bronze and gold as the days slip away and the end draws near.

The empty buildings are eeriest of all, haunted by the low hum of fluorescent lights and the dull knock of ancient boilers firing up day and night, even though no one is around.

There is still a rhythm to the place; its pulse continues to throb. But just barely. And only for a little while longer.

“The silence is really deafening for me,” said Robin Widoff, who at 40 has worked nearly half his life at the state hospital, through the birth of his two sons and the end of his marriage.

“This used to be an active, vital place, but now it doesn’t mean anything anymore,” he said. “It’s just a shell, because no one is left to give it meaning.”

After 61 years as one of the preeminent mental institutions in the nation, Camarillo State Hospital officially shuts down Monday, leaving only a skeleton crew to clean up and look after the place.

*

Ever since Gov. Pete Wilson ordered the closure in early 1996, the hospital has lumbered toward this day.

Hundreds of workers have left the facility since the start of the year, scattering to new jobs across the state.

And despite a lawsuit aimed at blocking patient transfers, all 700 of Camarillo’s mentally ill and developmentally disabled clients have been funneled to other facilities, many starting new lives after decades at the state hospital.

The exodus has transformed this sprawling campus, draining it slowly day by day.

“It’s like the street sweeper comes by and every day sweeps away more people and more cars,” said Carol Kehoe, who last week finished a 10-year run as the secretary for the hospital’s Work Training Center.

“Every day you come to work, somebody you know is gone, the place is a little more empty. You cry a little bit every day.”

A Gold Star Facility and Financial Burden

The final days at Camarillo State Hospital were hardest to take. How do you dismantle a place that has meant so much to so many?

After all, this was not just some local hospital. Groundbreaking research programs were performed here, including one that led to the widespread acceptance of the generation of drugs now used to treat schizophrenia.

It was a gold star facility, the largest in Southern California and the only one in the state treating the mentally ill and retarded at the same place.

But it had also become a financial burden, recording the highest costs in the state hospital system for patient care, an average of $114,000 a year per client.

Spurred, too, by a statewide push to care for mentally disabled patients in community programs, the hospital was targeted for closure and began to fold up late last year.

On June 10, the last patients were moved out. That left only the gut-wrenching task of sifting through the remnants.

In old Unit 84, previously a psychiatric skilled-nursing facility, most of the big items already had been moved. Workers were assigned to sort through the leftovers, salvaging anything worth saving and tossing the rest.

The discards spilled over a giant orange dumpster behind the sun-bleached Receiving and Treatment building.

“It’s like watching vultures pick the bones,” said Debbie Gardia, an 18-year hospital employee turned mover and packer in her final days of work. “We get to do this to practice moving our own families.”

By this time, everyone was playing out of position. Psychiatric technicians and occupational therapists were put on cleanup crews.

*

At the Work Training Center, the hospital’s priest and rabbi joined the computer science teacher and the dance therapy instructor in fulfilling the center’s final contract.

For decades, the center has contracted with outside businesses, such as 3M and Jafra, to perform a variety of tasks. Clients were paid to do everything from stringing together wind chimes to assembling drug-test kits.

But with the patients gone, others had to take their place. So there they sat, this high-priced talent, filling plastic bags with saw blades destined for a Camarillo company.

“All three degrees I have qualify me for this job,” joked Marvin Smith, the computer science teacher, following the rhythm of five blades per bag.

At any given time, the workshop would have up to a dozen contracts with outside firms and employ up to 120 clients. The operation paid for itself, generating about $230,000 a year.

“I would have liked to have continued this somewhere, but that didn’t happen,” workshop supervisor Marion Dalin said. “It’s been a real joy working with the clients. They have taught me so many wonderful things.”

Hospital a Community Within a Community

The state hospital was so much more than a workplace. It was a self-contained community within the community, an extended family of longtime workers who forged lifetime friendships.

Ventura County native Pam Ballard spent 17 years at Camarillo State Hospital as a recreational therapist. During that time she got married, had children and buried her father.

It isn’t easy to leave people who have shared those experiences. But that’s what she will do Monday, launching her own consulting business.

“There’s a lot of people who just can’t pick up and leave,” said Ballard, who finished her state employment by pushing chips and bottled water at the hospital’s eatery, The Hub.

“It’s very sad,” said the mother of two. “As large as this facility is, so many people have become like family.”

At the hospital’s credit union, the three-person staff was preparing last week to shut the place down, saying goodbye to its final customers. This week, the credit union merges with the Credit Union, sending manager Evelyn Ellis into retirement after 37 years at Camarillo.

“Our members have become not only members of our credit union, but they’ve become members of our family,” she said. “It’s kind of difficult to watch as they’re being scattered all over.”

Norm Kramer knows the feeling. He put in 31 years at the state hospital, finishing as executive director in charge of closing the place down.

His father, Tal, was Camarillo’s first health and safety officer decades ago. And Kramer has held a variety of jobs, starting as a psychiatric technician and working his way up to a program director and hospital administrator.

“I would have stayed here and retired if they had let me,” said Kramer, promised a job as hospital administrator at Sonoma Developmental Center. “We looked at every option we could find for keeping the place viable, but none of that worked.”

*

And so he packs. In an office rich with memories, he became a quick fan of bubble wrap. He packed pictures and an oversized red light taken off an old fire engine about 25 years ago. He packed candy jars and notebooks, and even the hospital’s closure plan.

“Well, there goes my personal life,” he said. “The longer I put it off, the longer I could pretend it wasn’t happening.”

There is been a lot of that around here. As recently as two months ago, Kramer said, employees were still asking whether the hospital would really close.

And perhaps they had good reason to hope.

Over the years there had been plenty of threats to shut the state hospital down or convert it to another use, including two attempts in the 1980s to convert it to a prison. In fact, Kramer said, in going through his belongings he found an old layoff notice dated in 1967, a year after he arrived at Camarillo.

Each time, however, the hospital’s stellar reputation helped beat back those efforts. But not this time. Not even close.

In coming weeks, before Kramer leaves for good, he plans to visit other facilities throughout the state to see how former Camarillo State Hospital clients and employees are doing.

That’s part of his personal closure process.

“I don’t think the community at large ever really understood our community here,” Kramer said. “It really was at the top in terms of services that were being provided throughout the state and the nation.”

Parent Groups Fought Closure With Lawsuit

It was that reality that prompted parents to fight so hard to try to keep the hospital open.

In March, two parent groups filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles against the state Department of Developmental Services, alleging the closure would violate state law and irreparably harm hospital patients.

With time running out on the mental institution, parents asked for a temporary court order to halt the closure and all patient transfers until a hearing could be held on those larger issues.

It didn’t happen. The most that Superior Court Judge Diane Wayne was willing to do was halt a handful of transfers until state officials could ensure that those patients would receive comparable care at other facilities.

Ironically, on the same day the hospital closes, Wayne is scheduled to review the state’s compliance with that order.

“Our inclination now is to just let this thing wither,” said John Chase, spokesman for one of the parent groups and the father of a developmentally disabled woman who transferred to a Costa Mesa facility after more than three decades at Camarillo.

“It’s heartbreaking, it’s the end of a remarkable institution,” Chase added. “Now we move on and hope for the best. But I’ll tell you, it’s something that keeps us awake nights.”

Although Rose Zachowski’s son, Patrick, transferred to another developmental center in April, she still is deeply attached to the state hospital.

*

She put in 15 years at Camarillo State Hospital as a registered nurse, retiring in 1987. And she still serves on the advisory board of two groups of senior citizens that volunteered to visit with state hospital patients 20 hours a week.

“I’m still angry at Pete Wilson for closing it,” said Zachowski, recently widowed and no longer able to visit her son once a week. “I don’t think they’ll ever be able to duplicate this again.”

On a recent afternoon all the senior volunteers descended on the state hospital for a final group picture.

It’s not that the group has disbanded. But with the push to provide services to the mentally disabled in the larger community, the seniors are now volunteering their services outside the hospital, in schools and other facilities.

Volunteer Dorothy Bobo got to see the end. She was the last of the senior companions to leave the hospital, hanging around long enough to see the last patients wheeled away.

“This was such a marvelous place,” she said. “It really is so sad. There was a lot of love here.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

About This Series

On Monday, a Ventura County landmark will officially close its doors. “A Community Says Goodbye: The Closing of Camarillo State Hospital” was an occasional series chronicling the final days of the mental hospital, following patients and employees as they moved on over the past few months. This final installment focuses on the remaining employees as they work to close the place down.