A Great Day for Treatment!

Expanded Access to Care for Santa Rosa and Beyond!

Last Tuesday, March 24^th, Pura Vida won a unanimous vote from Santa Rosa’s City Council in favor of our planned project to expand treatment services at our Mountain Hawk residential property.

With this sweeping victory, we can now put our long-standing vision into motion, consolidating our 3 residential & detox homes into one large, unified location – streamlining service delivery and adding an additional 6 treatment beds, bringing our total inpatient capacity to 24! This will also allow us to expand both our residential curriculum offerings as well as our sober living capacity by repurposing our other buildings.

This added capacity is greatly needed amid the recent closure of other area programs. The project, along with our full continuum of care, will also serve clients from further away who are looking to make a new start in Santa Rosa’s rich recovery culture.

For a bit more history on these proceedings:

A project of this scale requires a Conditional Use Permit which we initially sought in 2022, though that application was withdrawn and amended to make a stronger case before resubmitting in 2024. In November of 2025 we won approval from the Santa Rosa Planning Commission in a split vote, but that approval was contested by some residents of the neighboring housing development who felt a program like ours was “incomparable” with their area. (Yes, we share your collective eye-roll). These appeals required us to return to chambers again, but this time we had to argue our case before the City Council members themselves.

During both the Planning Commission and City Council hearings we endured hours of highly stigmatized public comments from nearby residents that underscored how much work remains to be done in educating our community about addiction and recovery. Sadly, the harassment we faced was not limited solely to public statements in Council Chambers as our opponents employed several other dubious tactics outside of official channels to antagonize, discredit, and intimidate us into withdrawing our application.

Fortunately, the good work we’ve done over our 10 years of operation in Santa Rosa provided ample insulation against their slings and arrows. Scores of alumni, family members, healthcare providers, and other members of the public turned up to voice their emphatic support for Pura Vida and our mission. In the end, even the City Council members themselves offered encouraging words as well as strong and poignant rebukes of the ignorant, fear-based tactics of our opposition.

You can hear their support in the video below.

Our GREAT THANKS to all of you who wrote letters, made public comments, and helped spread the word about this project! Your contributions have not only greatly assisted our work but will ultimately save lives and restore families! This is a great day for recovery, for the behavioral health community, and for Santa Rosa! Also, gratitude to the City Planning Staff who were a tremendous help and believed in our cause from the very start.

Last but certainly not least, we want to give a very special thanks to our own Kenny Hotchkiss and Paloma Salgado for putting together this awesome supercut of some of the council members’ comments!

Inside Outpatient

Meet our new Therapist!

Detox and Residential aren't the only programs at Pura Vida with reason to celebrate, though! Please join us in welcoming our new PHP/IOP Therapist...

Gema Ramirez, AMFT

Gema is a Registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist and Registered Associate Professional Clinical Counselor with seven years of experience within the mental health world. After completing her Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Sonoma State, Gema began her associateship with teen girls in a dual-diagnosis residential program where she saw the importance of recovery through a trauma-informed, community-based lens.

She draws on that experience, as well as her time working with adults in a crisis residential unit to provide support to clients in Pura Vida’s Outpatient Program.

In her clinical work, Gema utilizes a person-centered approach, meeting clients where they are with unconditional positive regard. She uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) techniques to help her clients identify their core values, find acceptance toward themselves, and make commitments to a life-long journey of recovery. With experience running Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) groups, she offers clients tools to cope with the challenges that life often brings.

Upon reflection, she states, “At the core of my work, I am a human sitting with another human, holding their experiences while they thread together their future.”

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Just When You Thought it was Safe to Go Back to Being an Introvert...

Brain Freeze Behavioral Health Ice Cream Social Returns!

Things have been heating up unseasonably early this year so why not kick off the summer festivities a bit sooner than usual?



Friday April 24^th at 1pm, join us at Salt & Straw in Santa Rosa’s Montgomery Village for a chance to rub shoulders with some of the best and brightest in Bay Area behavioral health, and of course, enjoy some FREE ICE CREAM!!

Share about your practice, learn about new resources, and build connections to grow your business. All healthcare workers, behavioral health providers, physicians, and wellness consultants are welcome!



Click below to RSVP!

Quite honestly, we have A LOT more we're excited to share with all of you, but a program expansions, new staff announcements, and free ice cream are already a lot to pack into one newsletter...

As always, thank you for your readership and collaboration toward a healthier & safer community. Please continue to watch this space for future updates from Pura Vida!

Sincerely,

The leadership & staff at Pura Vida Recovery Services