Bernard J. Wolfson
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![Perez takes a break during his therapy. He could barely breathe when he was admitted to Los Angeles County’s Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in early June of last year.](https://kcet.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/652d2c4/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1350x759+0+11/resize/768x432!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fkcet-brightspot.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Ff3%2F98%2F69a94fdf4c9380ccaf6d7d72fc26%2Fcovid-rehab-8-1350.jpg)
Vicente Perez Castro, a 57-year-old cook from Long Beach, could barely breathe when he was admitted to Los Angeles County’s Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. At a certain point, the doctors told his family that he wasn’t going to make it. Months later, here he was — an outpatient at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Downey, the only public hospital in the county whose main mission is patient rehab.