Learn about our mission, our team, and our commitment to your recovery.
In the fall of 2013, a Bellflower emergency physician named Dr. Lorena Aguirre found herself discharging the same five patients back to the same dangerous conditions week after week. She brought the problem to a neighborhood coalition — two pastors, the director of a local food pantry, a city council member, and three families whose adult children had no affordable residential option inside the 90706 ZIP code. They pooled meeting space, early capital, and a stubborn belief that a treatment center belonged in Bellflower, not an hour away.
That first year, ELYS operated out of a twelve-bed converted guesthouse on Woodruff Avenue. We moved to the Artesia Boulevard campus in 2017 after the coalition's fundraising matched a state grant. The original four families still sit on our advisory board. Thirteen years later, the pattern is the same: a patient in crisis, a coalition that refuses to look away, and a stabilization-first plan that makes the next morning possible.
Our mission is to deliver a clinically rigorous second chance to every adult who walks through our doors in crisis — regardless of age, insurance tier, or how many attempts came before.
Second chances are not a feeling. They are a set of clinical commitments: a medically stable first week, a treatment plan that tracks co-occurring conditions, a discharge that includes housing and employment realities, and an alumni network that keeps the door open after the final group session. We measure ourselves against those commitments, not against marketing slogans.
The name ELYS comes from our founders' shorthand for "every life you save" — a reminder posted in every staff break room that each admission is a finite opportunity and each discharge is the start of the real work.
Three clinical pillars hold the work together at ELYS Rehab. They are not abstractions — every treatment plan, group curriculum, and staff training traces back to one of these three.
Addiction lives in the body before it becomes a story in the mind. We treat sleep, nutrition, and somatic regulation as clinical priorities — not wellness extras. Morning movement, supervised meals in the farm-to-table kitchen, and trauma-sensitive bodywork appear on the same schedule as CBT and group.
Shame-based confrontation does not build durable recovery. Our clinicians use motivational interviewing as the baseline conversational style — reflective, non-adversarial, centered on the patient's own stated reasons to change. That orientation shows up at intake, in group, and in family sessions.
We assume every patient carries trauma history until care has demonstrated otherwise. Room layouts, group agreements, intake questions, and discharge conversations are all designed to reduce re-traumatization. Our staff receive trauma-informed care training annually and include four certified trauma specialists on the clinical team.
Executive Director & Co-Founder
Dr. Aguirre trained in emergency medicine at Harbor-UCLA and practiced at Bellflower Community Hospital for eleven years before co-founding ELYS Rehab in 2013. She oversees clinical strategy, regulatory compliance, and the coalition partnerships that shaped the facility. Her weekly admissions rounds are a fixture of life at the center.
Medical Director
Board-certified in addiction medicine and psychiatry, Dr. Benally leads the medical detox wing and the dual-diagnosis psychiatry team. Before joining ELYS in 2019, he practiced at the VA Long Beach Healthcare System, where he developed the 48-hour psychiatric review protocol that ELYS now uses for every co-occurring admission.
Clinical Director
Yvette directs all therapy curricula — individual, group, experiential, and family. She is a certified EMDR practitioner and oversees the trauma-informed care training cycle for every clinician and support staff member. Her Thursday family programming sessions are the most-requested hour on the ELYS calendar.
ELYS Rehab maintains the highest standards of care through nationally recognized accrediting bodies.
"I took a medical leave from my sophomore year at Long Beach State because my drinking had quietly become a full-time job. Walking into ELYS, I thought my education was over. The clinical team treated my studies as a pillar of recovery, not a distraction. Their library hours and structured mornings kept my brain engaged while the rest of me healed. I re-enrolled the semester after discharge and graduated on time."
— Mara K., residential alumna, 2024
"I am seventy-one years old. I drank for forty of those years and never once believed a treatment center would take someone my age seriously. The intake nurse looked me in the eye and said, 'Your story is not too late.' The equine therapy barn and the greenhouse became my anchors. I have been sober for fourteen months and I still drive over from Downey for the alumni dinners."
— Robert D., residential alumnus, 2024
"My wife and two daughters had stopped speaking to me by the time I arrived at ELYS. The family programming is what saved us — not because it was easy, but because it was honest. There were sessions I dreaded. There were apologies I had to say out loud with a clinician in the room. My youngest walked me out the day I discharged. We are rebuilding."
— James O., residential alumnus, 2023
