GLEASON HOUSE

BY ROGER PHILLIPS

Randy Pinnelli has not-so-fond memories of the first time he set foot in the decaying downtown home that once belonged to pioneering Stockton pharmacist and City Councilwoman Edna Gleason.

“There were leaks in the roof and pigeons in the attic,” Pinnelli recalls of the home on the grounds of the Gospel Center Rescue Mission. A contractor assessing the house said it would be cheaper to tear it down and start from scratch.

It was 2002, and Pinnelli, director of Community Medical Centers’ 1-year-old CareLink Healthcare for the Homeless Program, was touring the house with Bill Brown, then the CEO of the Rescue Mission.

“We’d love to have you here at the Mission,” Brown told Pinnelli. Pinnelli was intrigued. The location and the vision of what a refurbished Gleason House could be seemed tailor-made for a clinic devoted to caring for the homeless. Once then-CMC CEO Mike Kirkpatrick toured the battered house, a 30-year lease was agreed upon. The rent was $1 a year.

It would take nearly a decade to find the funding for the massive refurbishment that enabled Gleason House to open its doors as a medical clinic. It has proven to be worth the wait. >>

November marks the 10th anniversary of Gleason House’s opening. Pinnelli and Berber are two of five original Gleason House staff members still with CMC. The others are Social Worker/Case Manager Vikki Cardona, Medical Assistant Jeffrey Palacio-Cortez, and Receptionist Kelly Rillamas-Ente. There’s a sense of kinship among them. They are the ones who watched their workplace become a neighborhood landmark on San Joaquin Street south of the Crosstown Freeway. Each feels a bond with the light blue shingled two-story former home of Edna Gleason.

“It doesn’t look like a typical community clinic from the outside,” Palacio-Cortez says. “It gives a homey feel to it.” After 10 years, Gleason House remains the place for homeless residents to go when they need medical care provided by CMC staff. But CareLink staffing grew over the past decade to the point where the homeless outreach unit recently moved to roomier office space a few blocks away. The new space serves as the launching pad for CareLink staff before they head out for mobile clinics serving the homeless in the county’s encampments and sloughs.

“But in our hearts, Gleason House is our forever home,” Rillamas-Ente says.

Cardona sees a symbolic link between the once-battered house on South San Joaquin Street and the patients served within its now-sturdy walls.

“It’s a metaphor for how our patients are: We see them first, broken, with different ailments physically and mentally,” Cardona says. “And then we come alongside and partner with them, and we’re able to see some transformation in certain parts of their life that they’re ready to transform. It’s kind of like the house.”

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