A close-up look at people who matter : She Volunteers at Clinic to Pay Back America

Michelle Korn has every reason to feel bitter.

At 62, she remembers how her father was killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. She remembers spending much of her youth in the ghetto in Lodz, Poland, the death camp at Auschwitz, and the concentration camps at Dachau and Bergen-Belsen.

She remembers how her sister was saved when her mother refused to loosen her grip on the child as German soldiers tried to separate them.

Korn also remembers when U. S. forces liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp in May of 1945. And she remembers how the Americans nursed her back to health from the throes of living death.

So instead of bitterness for her torturers, Korn harbors gratitude for those who saved her and for the last 12 years has expressed it by volunteering two days a week as a lab technician at the Valley Community Clinic in North Hollywood.

“They fed us, deloused us, took care of us. They restored me.” Korn says of the U. S. soldiers. “That’s why I’m doing this. I’m giving back to the Americans. I love this country.”

She also loves the friends that she’s made while working at the clinic, especially fellow North Hollywood resident Lillian Finck.

For the last 15 years, Finck, 74, has volunteered two or three days a week in the clinic’s medical lab. Her motivation may not be as dramatic as Korn’s, but her dedication is every bit as strong.

“I retired three different times,” Finck said. “Just sitting back and doing nothing is not my bag.”

Her husband of 51 years agrees.

“It’s her whole life. It’s keeping her young,” said Joe Finck. “I’m used to making a lot of my own meals, but if it weren’t for the clinic I think she would really be bored.”

Together, Korn and Finck brighten the lives of many of the 34,000 patients who pass through the clinic’s doors each year.

“They’re almost a fixture here at the clinic,” said Paula Wilson, the clinic’s assistant director of development.

Wilson says the clinic’s goal is to provide quality health care, education and counseling in a non-judgmental manner.

By charging fees on a sliding scale, she says, the clinic helps patients maintain a sense of responsibility for their own health.

Now in its 22nd year, the Valley Community Clinic is one of the largest AIDS testing sites in greater Los Angeles, conducting 300 HIV tests per week, Wilson said.

Many of the people who come into the clinic are frightened, Wilson says, and Finck and Korn have the experience to help anchor the young staff and the compassion to offer comfort to worried patients.

“I met both of them when I started working at the clinic in 1985,” said clinic supervisor Diana Lugo of North Hollywood.

“Teens who work with us go to them for advice. Lil and Michelle are just like their moms or grandmothers.”

Evelyn Hernandez, a 17-year-old who works at the clinic as a peer health educator, says Finck and Korn keep an eye on her to make sure that she does the right thing. “I’m interested in the medical field and I ask them questions because they know a lot of stuff,” she said.

As far as medical expertise is concerned, Finck says she learned most of what she knows during her 12-year friendship with Korn, who studied to be a medical technician before emigrating to the U. S. from Germany in 1950.

“I learned a lot from Michelle,” Finck said. “Not just about medicine. I learned a lot of history. She told me all about her days in the Holocaust.”

Finck and Korn also share a lot of their time outside the clinic. Together with their husbands, they share meals and take in plays and movies.

“Sometimes we just go shopping and blow some money for a change,” said Korn.

“I cherish this friendship,” said Korn. “I think it’s rare that we hit it off like this.”