Starting out as a young medical practitioner, Brett Feldman sometimes walked for miles to treat homeless people living in the wooded outskirts of Allentown, Penn. Feldman was determined to treat those in need, wherever the path led.
Nineteen years later and 2,700 miles to the west, Feldman now helps lead the USC Street Medicine program he helped create. In Los Angeles, the epicenter of homelessness in America, the physician’s assistant never needs to look far to find someone in need.
“I never had to walk by somebody before that I couldn’t help. And that took a lot to get used to,” said Feldman, a short man with the muscles of a body builder and the dreamy affect of a poet. “That’s why we focus on the one-on-one, instead of trying to count big, big numbers. Eventually, we hope the ones add up to something bigger.”
On a recent morning, Feldman and his colleagues made their rounds, visiting people living in ragamuffin tents on sidewalks and crannies just west of downtown. Feldman, medical resident Israel Garcia and community health worker Raymond Luna patched up wounds, tested blood pressure, administered shots and handed out medications.
And they listened.
They listened to beating hearts. They listened to lungs rattling with chronic disease. They listened to the stories of people accustomed to being ignored.
“A lot of people drive by like you’re an eyesore or something,” said Zarak Walden, 58, sitting inside his stand-up tent, one of more than a dozen lining Beacon Avenue, within view of downtown’s luxury high-rises. “These guys don’t drive by. They stop. They talk. They communicate. Someone is showing love for you.”
Feldman and his crew came to check back on Walden’s girlfriend, a 24-year-old struggling to recover from having her leg and pelvis shattered in a fall from a fire escape. Feldman found her lying on just a couple of blankets on top of the concrete, moaning in pain. But he sees marked improvement from weeks earlier. Then, a surgical wound had reopened and grown infected, and the young woman’s weight had dropped to well under 100 pounds.
Walden marveled that Feldman even picked up the phone to take a progress report while the medic was in Kentucky attending a conference. “That shows this is more than a job,” Walden said. “That goes a long way with me.”
Charles Wilkerson III, who lives several tents down, said the Beacon Avenue residents recognize when true healers walk among them. “It’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s amazing,” said Wilkerson, 43, being treated for crystal meth addiction. “You just got to be honest with whatever you got. And Dr. Brett, he has the remedy.” (Many here call Feldman “Doctor,” more impressed by results than by any medical degree.)
USC Street Medicine plans to create its sixth team to focus on MacArthur Park, ground zero for the kind of “tri-morbidity” cases common on the street — in which substance abuse, mental health afflictions and physical maladies collide. (He’s helped launch another 200 street medicine programs nationwide.)
And the 44-year-old is just half of what one USC colleague called Street Medicine’s “superstar” couple. Wife Corinne Feldman creates curricula and training for street practitioners. Drawing from Catholic social teaching, the couple rejects the notion that healers must hold patients at arm’s length.
“Do you engage with them and maybe share in their suffering and maybe expose yourself to secondary trauma, or do you retreat in an act of self-preservation?” Feldman asks. “And if you’ve been trained, the professional thing to do is retreat… But when you do that, you leave the person isolated and you’ve also isolated yourself, knowing that you’ve abandoned the very people you’ve dedicated your life to serving.
“What we talk about, instead, is being willing to engage people in their suffering. You know: hugging with them, crying with them, being with them. I think that part is invigorating. It just feeds you. You are drawing from a deeper well.”
Feldman doles out pills and salves. He injects anti-psychotics and weight-loss drugs.
Along Beacon Avenue, it’s not hard to be overwhelmed by the smell of urine and despair. But Feldman’s nose seems more sensitive to hope. “What I love about medicine,” he says, “is that it’s really an instrument of peace.”
Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Alberto Carvalho speaks during a news conference at LAUSD headquarters in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
- Federal authorities raided the home and office of Carvalho on Wednesday morning in what appears to be a probe related to a company that developed an AI chatbot for the nation’s second-largest school system.
- Officials did not provide information about the investigation, but a source with knowledge of the case said it involved a failed AI company whose founder was charged with fraud in 2024.
- Here’s more on the rising star in education who is now part an of FBI investigation.
- Blue skies and toasty temperatures are on deck as possible record-setting heat sweeps into the region this week.
- On Friday, the heat wave is poised to tie or even break several single-day temperature records in Los Angeles.
- A tight race to replace termed-out Gov. Newsom has three Democrats and two Republicans in a statistical tie just months before the June primary.
- Cost-of-living concerns are driving voter preferences, with affordability emerging as a defining issue that could shape the election.
- With nine Democrats in the field, party leaders worry that two Republican candidates could advance to November’s general election.
- AI isn’t ready to be your doctor yet — but columnist Michael Hiltzik asks, will it ever be?
- Boring, nasty, predictable: Trump’s speech relies on game show theatrics that fall short, columnist Anita Chabria argues.
- At the Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club’s potluck party for Trump’s State of the Union address, there was a problem: Not many Hispanics showed up, columnist Gustavo Arellano writes.
Maria Sanchez browses through vinyl albums at the Midnight Hour Records store, which has become a community gathering spot and hub for supporting immigrants.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
- Record store: A San Fernando record shop at the center of the Valley’s ICE resistance is a hub for supporting immigrants, even as it struggles to keep the lights on.
- Theater: Katie Holmes wages sexual warfare in an energized new “Hedda Gabler” adaptation playing at San Diego’s Old Globe.
A cross-country ski and snowshoe rental yurt surrounded by snow on Mammoth Mountain.
(Suzanne Weiner)
Suzanne Weiner took this photo while on Mammoth Mountain. She said she enjoys the sheer beauty and peacefulness of being in this wooded area with lots of snow.
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Grand Canyon National Park is covered in the morning sunlight as seen from a helicopter near Tusayan, Ariz.
(Julie Jacobson / Associated Press)
On Feb. 26, 1919, the Grand Canyon was designated a national park. It went on to become one of America’s most popular tourist attractions.
For the national park’s 100th anniversary in 2019, The Times published a list of 100 things to know before you visit.
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