Carrie Estelle Doheny Foundation

On the feast of the Sacred Heart, June 24, 1927, three weary Carmelite sisters arrived in Los Angeles seeking refuge from the religious persecution then taking place in Mexico. Only one of them spoke English, and they had a mere $200. By 1930, with numbers increased to nine sisters, they purchased three acres situated among orange groves in the San Gabriel Valley and began a sanatorium for Spanish speaking girls afflicted with tuberculosis. The teaching and nursing order attracted numerous patients and benefactors, and over the years the institution grew to include a hospital with a maternity section, laboratory, complete x-ray, physiotherapy unit, and an administration facility as well as a convent. Later they were able to add 24-hour skilled nursing and extended care for elderly patients, as well as a day care center, thus realizing the goal of total family-centered health care.

Central to the current life of the hospital community is St. Joseph Chapel. The chapel, in size resembling a parish church, serves the Carmelite Sisters, patients, staff and visitors who come to daily Mass for prayer. On Sundays, attendance at the two services reaches 300 people. Recent Medical Center budget concerns and a nursing shortage have forced the Sisters to close the acute care section, but long-term care, out-patient surgery and ancillary departments continue to operate.

Santa Teresita is much more than a medical facility. The Carmelite Sisters bring their faith into all aspects of community life. Believing that true healing treats body, mind and spirit to restore broken, wounded or diseased humans, the Sisters make sure that all patients and residents receive the touch of caring. They depend on the Divine Physician to achieve wholeness and well-being, and share their life of prayer and fidelity to the Church with those whom they serve. At their St. Gerard’s Fertility Care Center, married couples are provided medical and spiritual care classes in fertility appreciation and natural family planning. In caring for the elderly, the Sisters are perceptive to their physical, psychological, social and spiritual well-being. They give them whatever degree of rehabilitation is possible in order to enhance the quality of their remaining years. Volunteers also play an important role in the personalized attention the residents receive. Included among today’s residents are yesterday’s volunteers…a testament to the confidence they held for the care and love that they would receive. Many patients, residents and their families readily credit their healing as much to the Carmelite Sisters’ prayers to the Divine Physician as to the excellent medical care.

Changes in the field of health care continue to provide challenges to the Carmelite Sisters, yet they remain firm in their resolve to continue to blend their faith and contemplation with action, as an apostolic service to the Church.