Danger, known as a former co-producer of MUSINK, the nation’s largest tattoo and music festival, and the founder of Golden Crown Barber Shop, partnered with Sharp, a restaurateur, bar consultant and owner of several hospitality agencies, including Intelligent ABV Holdings, Lifted Spiritz Agency, as well as an owner-partner at Daily Dose Hospitality. The Orange County natives, who met while attending Aliso Niguel High School, have combined their extensive experience in hospitality and entertainment to create Bardega.

The duo conceived their upcoming venue with a specific vision: to open a space that blends bar, market and restaurant, while also offering a comfortable and inclusive environment for those who eschew booze.

“The palette for drinkers is changing,” says Danger, “and we’ve seen it happening in recent years. They want to drink healthier. If that means no alcohol or lower ABV [alcohol by volume], or even less sugar, we want to fill that niche.”

ALSO READ: Mocktails, the hero of Dry January, find their place on cocktail menus — and beyond

Danger emphasizes their commitment to creating a welcoming atmosphere for everyone, noting that many of their friends don’t touch hard alcohol but still want to enjoy social outings. “They don’t want to go to a spot where they can only drink a Shirley Temple, which makes them feel like they’re at the kids’ table, or they feel ostracized,” he added.

Fear not, serious drinkers: Bardega will feature ethanol-amped libations for guests who prefer a full-throttle drink. “We’re also going to have a classic cocktail list and really lean into craft cocktails,” said Sharp. For people who eschew alcohol or prefer to get their buzz on at a lower frequency, every cocktail at Bardega will be available in non-alcoholic, low-ABV or full-spirit iterations.

Bardega will offer an expansive wine list, featuring bottles from the terroirs of Sonoma and Willamette Valley, and local beers, like Docent Brewing and Green Cheek.

The market and restaurant side of the venue will feature fare by chef Kyle Anderson. “He’s going to do some really good grab-and-go items, some wraps, salads and sandwiches,” said Sharp. “We’re going to do some house-made pickles, too, really leaning into quick grab snacks.”

ALSO READ: The 7 best rooftop restaurants in Orange County

Bardega will also feature a dining area with a dedicated menu for guests who want to dine in.

Both Danger and Sharp designed the space, which will nod to the 1970s. “We designed it with a retro vibe that has a modern feel to it,” said Sharp. “We’re in our forties now, and we kind of grew up with the ’70s style, which is kind of coming back into full popularity.”

“We’re just excited to be part of the community and really just showcase that alcohol full ABV and low ABV can kind of be blended together and just be fun for everybody,” said Danger. “We’re so excited.”

Still in its build-out phase, Bardega will tentatively open in early- to mid-October this year at 24781 Alicia Parkway in Laguna Hills, taking over the space previously occupied by Stefano’s Golden Baked Ham. Bardega will be an all-ages venue, open from 11 a.m. until 11 p.m. with the chance of staying open later on weekends.

The Tesla sedan crashed into a tree near 2300 Avenida De La Carlota at around 9:30 a.m., Orange County Sheriff’s Department Sgt Gerard McCann said. The sole occupant was found dead at the scene.

The person’s identity is not yet known, McCann said on Friday.

The sheriff’s major accident investigation team is looking into what led to the crash.

No additional information was available.

The incident occurred around 7:20 p.m. Monday near the 25000 block of Cabot Road, according to Mission Viejo Animal Services. Surveillance video shows a suspect exiting a vehicle, retrieving a white garbage bag and discarding it into the dumpster.

Animal services officials said they were notified Tuesday about an injured feline found in a dumpster just minutes before it was scheduled for collection. Officials put out a call on social media, asking if the public could identify the man, who was caught on surveillance footage throwing the cat away.

The owner reached out to officials and identified the man as her roommate. The man, who has not been identified by officials, was arrested Wednesday afternoon and will face a felony animal cruelty charge.

The cat, named Willow by Animal Services, was suffering from extensive injuries and was taken to a local animal hospital, where she is receiving treatment and is expected to recover, officials said.

“Despite this heartbreaking betrayal, Willow continues to show immense affection to the veterinary staff caring for her, purring and seeking comfort from those providing her with kindness and affection,” Mission Viejo Animal Services said in a statement.

Anyone with information about the case was urged to contact Mission Viejo Animal Services at 949-470-3045. Donations to support Willow’s recovery and other animals in need can be made to the Dedicated Animal Welfare Group at dawg.org

Mark Albert Rettenmaier, 72, of Laguna Hills pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana to two counts of possession of child pornography. He is free from custody on $600,000 bond.

Rettenmaier will face a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for each count during a sentencing hearing scheduled for Aug. 6. Prosecutors have recommended that he be sentenced to no more than five years in prison.

Rettenmaier’s license has expired and he is not currently eligible to practice medicine in California

On June 7, 2020, Rettenmaier uploaded 15 child porn images to an Adobe cloud-based storage system, according to the plea agreement. At least four of the images depicted a prepubescent minor and minor under the age of 12 engaging in sexual conduct, prosecutors said.

On July 22 that year, law enforcement officers seized Rettenmaier’s  cellphone and two laptop during a search of his home.The cellphone contained two child pornography images and one of the laptops contained a child porn video. Additionally, 209 images of minors engaged in sexual activity were found on the other laptop, the plea agreement states

One of the images on the laptop depicted a minor engaging in bondage constituting “sadistic and masochistic” sexual conduct, prosecutors said.

Rettenmaier admitted he knowingly downloaded the child porn images and video from the internet and stored them on his personal devices, according to the plea agreement.

Rettenmaier, who was the founder and head physician of Southern California Gynecologic Oncology, cared for women with gynecologic malignancies and unusual or complicated benign pelvic disorders in Orange County for more than 35 years, according to his biography,

Previously, in a separate case, Rettenmaier was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2014 on two counts of possessing child pornography.

The indictment was handed down after technicians at a national Best Buy facility in Kentucky, known as Geek Squad City, discovered what prosecutors described as a photo of a naked, prepubescent girl while fixing Rettenmaier’s broken computer and notified local FBI agents.

Rettenmaier’s attorneys challenged the legality of the computer search, leading U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney to hold hearings, during which the defense could call witnesses to explore the relationship between the FBI and Best Buy.

During those hearings, several Best Buy employees testified that they occasionally run across what they believe to be child pornography in the course of their repairs. The employees said they believed they had a “legal and moral” obligation to report their findings to law enforcement.

An FBI agent acknowledged paying some Best Buy employees $500 for some of the tips, but denied asking them to do anything outside of their normal work duties. Carney ultimately found that the Best Buy techs did nothing wrong.

The child pornography charges against Rettenmaier were dismissed after Carney threw out much of the evidence because of “false and misleading statements” made by an FBI agent.

Carney also found that a request for a search warrant for Rettenmaier’s home failed to note the image found by Best Buy technicians that led to the investigation was in an area on his computer where deleted files are kept, so he may not have been aware of it.

The judge also focused on the testimony of the FBI agent who first examined Rettenmaier’s computer, and who acknowledged during courtroom testimony that the photo the techs found did not “by itself” constitute child pornography. The agent described the image as depicting an underage girl on her knees on a bed wearing a choker-type collar.

While the image may have been “distasteful and disturbing,” the judge determined it was not child pornography but instead child erotica, “the viewing of which is not unlawful,” Carney said during a hearing.

Staff writer Sean Emery contributed to this article.

“It’s a good question because that’s something that isn’t written about much,” says Collins, 83, the best-selling former poet laureate of the United States. “It is a habit one develops, I think, over years. Recognizing, through all the waterfall of daily experience, and taking in everything around one in this fairly confusing world, how does one take out one little thing to write about?

“It has to do with recognizing the potential in something,” he says. “So you don’t have a sort of strict attitude toward it but it might just go somewhere.”

Take, for instance, the time when Collins thought of the late poet Donald Hall, who was then almost 90 years old.

“I was imagining that he and I, we became friends,” he says. “We both lived to be 200 and what would that be like? I don’t know. That just occurred to me when I was thinking about his age and his death. And if we were alive at 200 what would we think? What would the world be like?

“The stars held their place. Except for – this is the way the poem ends – that one star, which used to be the elbow of the constellation the Archer, somehow has gone missing.”

That’s typical of the odd, unexpected way he sometimes ends his poems.

“I like the poem to begin with something very familiar, and then end with something a little weird,” Collins says. “Or another way to put it, begin with something that is undeniably true and easy to get the reader on board, and then work the poem in certain directions so that we end up more in Oz than Kansas.”

Collins, whom the New York Times once called “the most popular poet in America,” comes to the Samueli Theater at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa on Monday, Jan. 13. He will recite poems from his new collection, “Water, Water” as well as older works, and converse with Paul Holdengräber, the founder of the New York Public Library’s public program series “Live From the NYPL.”

In a conversation edited for length and clarity, Collins talked about writing poems while driving a car, the role that mortality plays in poetry, touring with indie musician Aimee Mann, and more.

SEE ALSO: Like books? Get our free Book Pages newsletter about bestsellers, authors and more

Q: How do you choose which poems to read at an event like this – certainly some from the new collection?

A: Yeah, I’ll dip into ‘Water, Water’ because it’s the book du jour. It’s been out only a month so it’s still got wet paint on it. I also have a playlist of poems from a lot of other books. It’s just a column of poems and page numbers, poems for when I do a reading in public.

More generally speaking, I do write some humorous poems, and I try to jump around the playlist so that it doesn’t get too funny. If the audience is having too much fun, I’ll try to read something much more serious, and then I’ll go back to entertaining them. The end effort is to have them leave the auditorium pleasantly disoriented.

Q: I’ve read that you write by hand and then put it into the computer later. Do you write every day? Do you have a place you like to write?

A: I have habits, but not ones that I tend to keep. I don’t write every day. I like to write first thing in the morning if I’m going to write at all, and I’ll often sit down in a certain chair, by a window, by some French doors, where there’s a lot of sunlight coming in.

I often get someone else’s book, like Charles Simic is someone I like to read before I write, or an anthology of Chinese poetry maybe, because that tends to be a very simple diction. Something might happen and something might not happen.

You know, when someone new comes to the house and I show them my so-called study, I say, ‘This is where the magic fails to happen.’ And with that, the waste basket is the writer’s best friend. But I can also write on the fly, in an airplane or a train, or even driving. If I’m driving in the United States, I have a right hand free and I can write on the passenger seat. This is more difficult for driving in Ireland or Britain, so I don’t write as much on the road.

Q: Some of your poems seem to reference places or things from your life. How common is that?

A: This book, ‘Water, Water,’ is much more autobiographical. I mean, my wife and I did go to Amsterdam and we checked out the place where Chet Baker died. I do go to a racetrack. I gave a lecture on Emily Dickinson. I stop at a roadhouse and hear Percy Sledge. So yeah, it’s much more autobiographical.

I’m not sure why. My persona has basically been very speculative and not autobiographical. I don’t write about experiences, per se. I’m more of a ‘invent the experience by taking a 200-year-old Donald Hall and then making something out of it.’

Poets get a lot of suggestions. It’s usually an event in itself: ‘You should write about the Hindenburg,’ or something. Well, that’s way too much for my poem. My little persona is basically looking at a flower or walking the dog or just very immersed in everyday life.

Q: You mention this collection is more autobiographical and you’re not entirely sure why. Has aging influenced the work you write?

A: Well, it does and it doesn’t. It doesn’t in the sense that the main engine that drives poetry is mortality, or as I like to say, the thrill of mortality. I think Kafka was asked, ‘What’s the meaning of life?’ And he said, ‘The meaning of life is that it ends.’ Which is nice and final.

When I was starting to write awful poems in high school, they were about mortality, many of them. They were about ‘seize the day’ and ‘gather ye rosebuds’ and ‘stop and smell the roses’ and all that. I was 17 years old, and I had a long way to go, as it turned out.

I’m not denying that I’m aging, as we all are. I’ve never thought of it that way, but you could have something there. Perhaps I’m running out of experience, so I’m writing more about direct experience. I try not to do that in most of my poems because I don’t want the poem to be driven by memory.

I want the poem to be an event that’s taking place as they read it, not a dredged-up memory about going fishing with my Uncle Charlie or something. I find memory poems claustrophobic. They really limit the imaginative play that’s possible in poetry.

Q: You grew up in New York but came to the University of California, Riverside, for your master’s and doctorate. What brought you West, especially to Riverside?

A: I’d never been west of the Mississippi except to go to Dallas a couple of times. I’d certainly never been to California. And this was back when Joan Didion was writing about California a lot. You could tell she was writing from the front lines. California always sounded interesting, and they offered me a (teaching assistant position) and free tuition.

I don’t know if you remember this sports car called the Sunbeam Alpine. Well, I bought that in London and brought it over on the Queen Mary, stopped at my parents’ house for a few days and I drove it to California. I got to Riverside about 10 o’clock at night, about to begin my graduate studies, and I stopped at a gas station there.

There was a kid there, and I said with my East Coast sensibility, ‘So where’s the river?’ He gave me a look like I might have been saying, ‘Where’s the monkey who runs the movie theater?’ or something. He thought for [a minute], said, ‘Well, there’s a river bed.’ I had pictured this river running through.

But I wasn’t disappointed. There was no smog in Riverside at the time. There were orange groves everywhere, and the orange blossom aroma perfume would just waft into your house. It was beautiful and amazing.

Q: You studied romantic poetry there?

A: Because I’d gone to a Jesuit college, I had four years of Latin and two years of Greek. I took a course out there in Chaucer and this professor, Don Howard, knew that I’d been living in the Middle Ages in Massachusetts, so he kind of adopted me as a graduate student. But it was the ’60s in California and suddenly High German and Latin didn’t seem like the thing to do.

So I started reading Wordsworth and Coleridge and, I must say, I abandoned him and went over and wrote a dissertation on them. But I’m still kind of a recovering medievalist.

Q: Tell me about working to make poetry more accessible, like the Poetry 180 program for high schools you started as poet laureate or the time you went on the road with Aimee Mann.

A: Touring with Aimee Mann was a blast. We were driving in a van all over California and Texas. Also, the big thing about that was that musicians get encores. As you know, poets don’t get encores. You read the last poem, it’s over. So we’d be backstage after, the applause would keep going on and on. She said, ‘Come on, let’s go out there again.’ Really? [Laughs]. That was a really interesting dessert. I also interviewed Paul Simon four times on different stages.

The 180 Project [for which he chose one poem for every day of the school year] came out of me being poet laureate. I didn’t want to just bang the drum for poetry because I think a lot of poetry, in fact about 83 percent of it, is not worth reading. But I could bang the drum for poetry I liked, and I had the sense that high school was sort of the place poetry went to die.

I could pick 100 poems that I already liked, but it was hard to get 180. I tried to pick poems that were clear, sometimes funny. It started as a website for high school teachers. Then it became a book, and then a second book. I think poetry belongs not just on the shelves of libraries and bookstores, it belongs in public.

I just retired from the Poetry Society of America, but we were responsible for Poetry in Motion, that’s on busses and trains and subways everywhere. And recently, we teamed up with Meals on Wheels so that now, at least in New York and a bunch of other cities, you get a little poem with your meal delivered to your door.

Q: So what was it like when the New York Times called you ‘the most popular poet in America’? You walk into a room of fellow poets and they’re all like, ‘Oh, here comes the most popular poet in America again’?

A: Yeah, well that’s one reason I don’t hang around with a lot of poets. Listen, someone’s got to be the most popular. I don’t how they quantify that. I’m not gonna fight it.

Billy Collins in conversation with Paul Holdengräber

When: Monday, Jan. 13, 8:00 p.m.

Where: The Samueli Theater at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Costa Mesa

Information: https://www.scfta.org/events/2025/billy-collins

The store made its official debut on Dec. 14.

It’s the 69th location in California for the Concord-based chain, and the second for Orange County. The other is in Huntington Beach. The company dates to 1976 when Michael Levy started a dog training business in the Bay Area. 

The store sells a wide array of pet food related products. It also offers a self-serve pet wash station and in-store dog training classes. It also offers same-day delivery, plus the option to buy online and pick up orders at the store.

Address: 24241 Carlota Ave.

The pet food retail scene took a hit in early December, when the Lake Forest location of Pet Wants closed its doors .

The pet store closed after six years at Heritage Hills Plaza on Lake Forest Drive.

Design studio, decor shop opens in Costa Mesa

Molly O’Neil, a Newport Beach native, recently opened Molly O Architectural Interior Design Studio in Costa Mesa.

The studio and home decor shop specializes in luxury residential and hospitality projects.

Hours: 9 am to 4 pm Monday through Friday and by appointment on Saturdays. Address: 1663 Placentia Ave.

For more information, go to mollyointeriors.com or call 949-423-4685.

New urgent care for Hoag in Newport Beach

By year’s end, Hoag will open its 17th urgent care facility, this one inside the Hoag Health Center Newport Beach – Jamboree.

The urgent care, officially open on Dec. 30, will be staffed with roughly 100 doctors and 150 staff members. Patients with illnesses and injuries, from coughs and colds to aches and accidents, can be treated there.

Address: 4699 Jamboree Road in Newport Beach. Hours: 8 am to 8 pm Monday through Friday and 8 am to 5 pm Saturday and Sunday.

For more information, go to hoagurgentcare.com .

Donations sought for Meals on Wheels

Meals on Wheels OC needs help from the community to get meals to shut-in seniors this season.

The is asking for $10 donations to pay for an organization holiday meal.

Donations of any amount can be made online at MealsonWheelsOC.org

Meals on Wheels says one in four older adults in Orange County struggle with hunger. The nonprofit helps by providing a million meals annually to at-risk older adults in the county.

Mentors needed for Dragon Kim program

Adult volunteers are needed to mentor the annual Dragon Kim Fellowship.

The fellowship is a seven-month social entrepreneurship program that awards community service grants to high school students in Arizona, California and Nevada. Each student is required to create and manage programs that will impact their communities.

The foundation is looking for experienced adult mentors to work with the high school students. Projects topics include musical and visual arts, academics, business, environment, mental health, STEM and robotics.

For more about the organization, go to dragonkimfoundation.org/fellowship

$9.4 million gift will support OCC students

The Orange Coast College Foundation was recently given a $9.44 million gift from an alumni donor, the largest in the school’s history.

OCC declined to identify the donor.

The money will go toward students in OCC’s Visual and Performing Arts programs.

“Investments like this one in our OCC arts students can have a profound impact on an institution like OCC,” says OCC President Angelica Suarez. “Donors are recognizing that their investment in our community college can benefit a greater number of students compared to other sectors of higher education.”

This money will be used to establish the OCC Endowment for the Arts, a scholarship fund for students continuing their education at OCC or transferring to other institutions.

Some of the money will also support performance and exhibition opportunities.

On the move

Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County recently promoted two employees and hired two new ones for four director roles. The promotions include Vanessa Lopez to director of food safety and facilities, and Starlite Ossiginac to director of strategic initiatives. Toyah Brooks was hired as director of operations, and Crystal Tosello as director of its annual campaign.

Vanguard University recently promoted Michael Pearlman to chief financial officer and Shree Carter as chief of staff. Both Pearlman and Carter had been serving in interim roles in their respective positions, the university said. Carter, during her 25 years at Vanguard, has held multiple roles, most recently as the director of Organizational Strategy. Pearlman has been with Vanguard for two years.

On board

Tyler Diep and Chi Charlie Nguyen were recently sworn in to the board of directors at the Midway City Sanitary District. Diep was re-elected, having previously served in four terms since joining the board in 2006. Nguyen was re-appointed for a third term. Sergio Contreras was appointed as the board president.

Appointments

Cypress resident Love Adu was recently appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to the California Community College Board of Governors. She has been a Voters Choice Act ambassador for California Secretary of State, peer tutor at Cypress College, senator at the Associated Students of Cypress College, publicist for the Cypress College Honors Program and policy researcher at Diversify our Narrative since 2024. The position does not require Senate confirmation; compensation is $100 daily. Adu is not registered to vote.

Grants

Nonprofit Radiant Futures in Fullerton was recently awarded an annual grant of $15,000 from The Rosendin Foundation. The money will go toward counseling services for survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. “The funds will help support the mission of Radiant Futures to use survivor-driven, trauma-informed practices to build a safer community,” said Mark Lee, the nonprofit’s chief executive officer. For more information about Radiant Futures, go to www.radiantfutures .org.

Status Update is compiled and written by Business Editor Samantha Gowen. Submit items and high-resolution photos to    sgowen@scng.com   . Allow at least one week for publication. Items are edited for length and clarity.

Who are the people who do important things outside of the spotlight? Let us know about the kids who help their community, the first responders, the educators and the volunteers who might not get attention most of the year but deserve some now.

And, of course, we’ll include some of the people everyone knows. World Series MVP Freddie Freeman went to El Modena High in Orange, after all, and there’s a pretty good chance he’ll make the cut.

Please nominate someone who has done something exceptional in 2024 using the form in this link. We’re looking for people who live or work in Orange County and truly made a difference this year.

The deadline for your nominations is Tuesday, Nov. 26 at 5 p.m.

Thank you.

By the way, here’s a look at our selections from the past several years:

• 2023
• 2022
• 2021
• 2020
• 2019
• 2018
• 2017
• 2016

Initial results from early voting released shortly after the close of polls Tuesday night had Jared Mathis and incumbent Don Caskey out to an early lead.

See the latest election results.

Caskey, a retired architect, was elected in 2022 to complete a two-year term on the council. Now he’s hoping voters have awarded him a full four-year term.

Challenging him are Neel Patel, a director of actuarial and analytics, and Mathis, CEO of the Moulton Company.

Mathis has deep roots in Laguna Hills. His great-grandparents, Lewis and Nellie Gail Moulton, made their home there in 1874.

Patel has served on the city’s Traffic Commission.

These include incumbent Don Caskey, a retired architect; Neel Patel, director of Actuarial & Analytics; and Jared Mathis, CEO of the Moulton Company. All three candidates said they are especially focused on prioritizing public safety for their community.

Patel said his goal is to make the community “the best in Orange County.” He sees three solutions to getting there: public safety, beautification and new recreational facilities.

“With violent and property crime rates higher than every city bordering us, I propose investments in technology, code enforcement and our public safety officers to address this,” he said, in the Orange County Register’s Voter Guide, about what areas should be priorities.

While some areas of the city have improved median and landscaping, he sees areas in the older parts of town as neglected, including the post office.

“Investing in landscaping and public art will make Laguna Hills stand out,” he said. With the demolition of the Laguna Hills mall, Patel wants there to be more places where people can gather, such as a new library, building out the city’s last planned park, and creating a new lakeside amenity.

Mathis has deep roots in Laguna Hills. His great-grandparents, Lewis and Nellie Gail Moulton, made their home there in 1874.

While he runs the family’s business and manages real estate around the county, Mathis has also taken time to coach youth sports.

His ballot candidate statement said he wants the city to be safer and improve parks and local infrastructure.

“I want to create a greater sense of community pride and belonging within our city, our schools and our neighborhoods,” he said.

Caskey, who also served on the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission and was the architect-in-charge for City Hall, was elected in 2022 to complete a two-year term on the council. He has lived in town for 40 years and has been involved locally in coaching youth sports.

“My first priorities are for the safety of our residents, economic development and renewal of our parks and community infrastructure,” he said in his candidate statement. “We have invested significantly to enhance public safety with new sheriff and security personnel. That commitment has seen very positive results.”

Read more of the candidates’ responses to the Voter Guide at ocregister.com/voter-guide.

Ballots may be mailed back, returned to an OC Registrar of Voters official dropbox or taken to a vote center. Vote centers start opening for in-person voting on Oct. 26 and Election Day is Nov. 5.

The 40,000-square-foot, three-level facility is a one-stop shop for women’s health and fills community care needs, doctors said. Construction began two years ago and cost about $70 million.

“The idea of a comprehensive breast center that has all of the subspecialists involved with breast care under one roof is the ultimate in terms of quality care,” said Dr. Gary Levine, the pavilions director who has been with MemorailCare for a decade and before that led Hoag Hospital’s breast center. “We know traditionally women would go to a radiology facility for their mammogram and to another facility for an ultrasound, then somewhere else for a biopsy. If they were diagnosed, they would be sent somewhere else to see a surgeon, an oncologist, or a plastic surgeon.”

Levine said this cumbersome process often impacts the quality of care because information can be delayed or lost as patients move from facility to facility.

The new building, located directly across a parking lot from the main hospital in Laguna Hills, includes the already-established MemorialCare Breast Center. Those offices have now been moved to the new center.

The pavilion’s focus is not only on treating diseases or conditions, but also on a woman’s entire wellness needs.

Described as a spa-like environment, the facility and its programs will offer advanced technology and community education services. The education center includes nutritional counseling, wellness classes, and options for yoga and Pilates classes.

Among offerings are mental wellness support, a survivorship program, breast care navigators and a women’s health services navigator. The facility will also perform oncology and OBGYN surgeries. Patients will also have access to certified nurse midwives, genetic counseling, a skin cancer program, and a cancer care boutique.

Levine said doctors and care staff have been gradually added as the breast care center has grown. The Laguna Hills campus will have the largest location, but Levine added that MemorialCare in total has nine breast centers across Southern California.

Last year, he said MemeorialCare’s breast center in Laguna Hills diagnosed more than 600 new patients; with the health system’s other eight centers, that number was 1,200.

“Women have careers and families,” Levine said. “Prioritizing their own healthcare is often difficult. Having a women’s health pavilion certainly promotes this.”