history

Fortunately, Alicia Sanchez always had more heart than good sense. Otherwise, Clinica Campesina might never have come to be. Back before the Lafayette/Louisville area had dozens of doctors and a 98-bed hospital, back when the area was dotted with commercial farms that hired Spanish-speaking migrant workers, Alicia was the local "medica." People turned to her when they were sick and had no money. Every week, she loaded her car with the area's poor and drove to University Hospital in Denver so people could get low-cost care.

Through a true grassroots effort, Alicia and community leaders started Clinica Campesina in September 1977. The first office was in a tiny house in Lafayette. The clinic consisted of a waiting room, a bedroom that was divided into two exam rooms, a kitchen with a coffee pot on one side of the sink and a microscope on the other, and a lone nurse practitioner who took care of people.

Alicia died in 1985, but the clinic she dreamed of while driving back and forth to Denver still grows. While we once cared for several hundred migrant workers and low-income locals, Clinica now has a $15.5 million operating budget and serves 23,960 patients with 106,112 patient visits a year. The staff has grown from that one nurse practitioner to 31 medical providers and almost 160 support personnel. We now have three locations: our Lafayette clinic in Boulder County, our Pecos clinic in Adams County and a medical/dental clinic in the City of Thornton.