Toddlers’ Deaths Prompt County to Tap Coalition

When the first Orange County toddler died after getting a series of injections from an unlicensed clinic operator, Mary Watson got angry.

“When Christopher Martinez died, there was nothing in place, no plan of action,” she said, referring to the 13-month-old boy who died last April after receiving the fifth injection at a Santa Ana storefront clinic.

Watson has since channeled her anger into civic action and helped found the Santa Ana Safe Medicine Coalition. The group recently stepped up its push against illegal back-room medical clinics after last week’s death of Selene Segura Rios. The 18-month-old Anaheim girl died after getting an injection at a Tustin gift shop.

Now the coalition is being tapped by the county to help in an effort to create a task force to deal with the growing number of unlicensed people dispensing medicine at makeshift clinics in the back rooms of toy stores, dress shops and other businesses.

The Board of Supervisors invited members of the coalition, which recently changed its name to Orange County Safe Healthcare Coalition, to make a presentation seeking funding at the board’s meeting Tuesday.

“I had hoped that after the second baby died, we would start something up big--really big--to help put a stop to this,” said Watson, executive director of the nonprofit Free Health Plan in Santa Ana.

“I don’t want the third baby to die,” she said. “I don’t want this to happen ever again in this county.”

Board Chairman Charles V. Smith said he and other supervisors are considering funding the coalition to help with a countywide information campaign that would encourage the use of existing free medical clinics.

Sara Murrieta, the coalition’s co-chairwoman, said the group has no funding base and relies on about 20 volunteers from community-based organizations and medical clinics.

The group has many goals, but “we can’t do it by ourselves; we need the assistance of others,” Murrieta said.

On Wednesday, top county officials, including the district attorney, sheriff and Health Care Agency director, decided to create a two-pronged task force.

The law enforcement arm would be aimed at closing illegal operations. The education arm, which the coalition could possibly lead, would launch a public information campaign, primarily for those immigrants who may not be covered by health insurance and may seek out the storefront operations for help.

Prevention is key, Watson said. She believes that more goodwill comes from warnings than from storefront raids.

“The county needs an all-out radio campaign,” Watson said. “We need TV, and lots of it, because [many] of the immigrant residents are illiterate in their own languages. We want slides in the movie theaters. We want bus-stop ads, billboards, bumper stickers. Fliers are not enough.”

Others also are getting the word out about low-cost medical services. On Friday, Assemblyman Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) held a press conference for Spanish-language media to provide information on low-cost medical services already available, regardless of immigration status.

Correa mentioned the state-run Healthy Families program, which provides care for as little as $7 a month per family, depending on income, and clinics operated by UCI Medical Center. One clinic in Santa Ana is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; another clinic, in Orange, is open around the clock.

“We need to educate people that there are options available,” he said.

One of the coalition’s outreach tools has been a flier warning in English and Spanish against medicines “that can both cure and kill.” About 2,000 copies were produced, Watson said. It will soon be translated into Vietnamese.

Watson would like the coalition to develop a compendium of herbal medicines and remedies popular in the immigrant communities. She wants to make that volume available to medical practitioners, who can then explain to patients how the medicines work, if they are beneficial and whether some are dangerous.

Also on Friday, the county chapter of the League of United Latin American Cities asked the county grand jury to investigate county-run medical programs to make sure they effectively are informing low-income and immigrant families of their access to health care.

Local agencies receiving government funds have an obligation to market their services to those who need it most, said Arturo Montez of LULAC.

“Families and individuals who cannot receive affordable health-care services are then forced to go to the back rooms and alleyways of illegal clinic operations to seek medical care for their loved ones,” he said.

Grand jury members were unavailable for comment.

Police, meantime, said the family that owns and operates the Los Hermanos Gift Shop in Tustin, where baby Selene received an injection of what her parents were told was penicillin, has a history of selling illegal pharmaceuticals.

Oscar Eduardo King of Chula Vista and Santa Ana is the registered owner, but he told The Times last week that he turned the business over to his sister Laura Escalante last year.

King and his father, Manuel Javier King, were arrested in October 1992 in connection with the sale of an illegal pregnancy prevention drug to women at the Orange Swap Meet. The injectable drug, Perlotal, is illegal in the United States and has not been proved to stop pregnancies, state investigators said.

The drugs sold by the elder King, of Santa Ana, and his son contained markings indicating the medicine was from Mexico, police said, and both men were convicted in the case.

Two years earlier, the elder King was arrested in a Santa Ana garage while he and another man, Hector Raul Becerra, administered a shot to a 6-month-old child, police said. Becerra identified himself as a physician in Mexico. Police, seized an assortment of medical equipment, including syringes and intravenous bottles, and the men were convicted, they said.

Rosa King, another sister of Oscar King’s, was convicted last year of selling prescription drugs out of her Santa Ana gift shop after investigators bought illegal birth-control pills and other medicine there.

Also contributing to this story was Times staff writer Jean O. Pasco.