By SIERRA SHAFERStaff Writer

In more than 40 years of med-icine, Dr. Gary Rachelefsky has treated between 80,000 and

100,000 patients for asthma, aller-gies and repertory diseases.

Until his retirement at the end of January this year, he was even treating the grandchildren and great grandchildren of some of his origi-nal patients.

As the director of the Execu-tive Care Center for Asthma, Al-lergy, and Respiratory Diseases, a professor of allergy and immunol-ogy and an associate director of the Allergy-Immunology Training Pro-gram at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Rachelefsky has been extraordinarily busy for a very long time.

It doesn’t look like retirement will change that much.

“Gary doesn’t ease into any-thing. He’s as busy as ever retir-ing,” his wife, Gail Rachelefsky, laughed. “It’s just another phase of exhaustion. His retirement is basi-cally just a vacation, waiting for the next thing to start up.”

While many see retirement as a long-awaited chance to sit still, it’s very clear the long-time Palisadians only intend to sit long enough to dream up their next endeavors.

They’ve already started a long list of travel wishes and planned adventures abroad with their eight grandchildren.

This spring, Rachelefsky will trade his stethoscope for a base-ball mitt and coach his 4-year-old grandchildren’s t-ball team.

He has also taken time to work on his golf game.

“That was a big mistake. I started playing seriously less than a year ago and it is the most frustrat-ing thing I have ever done,” he said. “But it is teaching me humility. It’s the first endeavor I’ve failed in.”

Rachelefsky is six weeks into retirement from one of the most prestigious careers in his field and after a whirlwind career like his the change has been a significant one.

“It’s hard to just stop. I’ve been very successful at it so far but it’s only been a few weeks,” he said. “I’m still mentoring and teaching, but I’m not doing patient care anymore and that’s really an adjustment.”

Among a long list of legacy achievements, Rachelefsky served as president of the Respiratory and Allergic Disease Foundation and has more than 150 peer-reviewed publications dealing with allergy, respiratory disorders and immunol-ogy, including his book for parents of children with asthma, “Free Your Child from Asthma: A Four-Week Plan to Eliminate Symptoms.”

He was president of the Amer-ican Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology and on the edito-rial board of “The Annals of Asth-ma, Allergy, and Immunology.”

A member and past president of the American Board of Allergy and Immunology and past chairper-son of the allergy and immunology section of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Rachelefsky served as their representative to the Na-tional Asthma Education and Pre-vention Program at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

His wife Gail is a force to be reckoned with in her own right, having raised their three daughters, Holly, Cara and Lindsay, along-side her husband.

“Back then, it’s what wom-en did – support their man and have children and look forward to when it would be a little bit

easier,” she said.“Our daughters have turned out

pretty well and it’s all because of Gail,” her husband added.

Rachelefsky grew up in Brook-lyn Heights, his wife in Queens. On summer nights, he would sit on the roof of his childhood home watch-ing half of the Dodgers game, lis-tening to the score on a transistor radio.

“We could only see half of the field from up there,” he said. “So that was the half we watched.”

After graduating from Colum-bia, Rachelefsky went on to medical school at Washington University in St. Louis followed by a medical in-ternship at Bellevue Hospital and a residency at Johns Hopkins.

The following two years were

spent in Atlanta, working for the Center for Disease Control – and his first exposure to immunology. At that time, Rachelefsky was in-terested in academia and research.

“I was exposed to a lot of peo-ple who were doing research and the CDC and they were beginning to understand why certain diseases were happening; like cancer and asthma. It was the beginning of the specialty and it was very exciting,” he said.

Rachelefsky had accepted a fellowship in Boston and a promis-ing career in academia was unfold-ing before him when the CDC sent him on a quick trip to Southern California – and a February walk along the Malibu sands changed everything.

“It was like a light bulb came on. The ocean was beautiful; the people were beautiful. It was like I was starstruck by California,” he said. “I changed our whole di-rection. It was the first time I did something spontaneous in my life.”

In one fell swoop, he withdrew from his position in Boston and ac-cepted a fellowship at UCLA.

“We had visions of living on the East Coast, the goal was to set-tle down there,” Rachelefsky said. “The thought of going west of the Mississippi was totally unheard of.”

Gail made her husband prom-ise they would move back even-tually.

“Yet here we are,” she said. “We’re never going to leave the Palisades.”

Listening to the pair of New Yorkers reminisce about their jour-ney to the West Coast is enough to make anyone stand in awe at their less-than-quiet life in the Palisades.

They remember their first day in Southern California with a nos-talgic detail that could convince anyone back East to pack up and head for the Pacific.

It was a hot, Santa Ana day when they came looking for a place to live.

“You would have thought we’d left the country. Before we moved here, all we knew of Southern Cal-ifornia was the Rose Bowl,” Gail remembers. “Then we drove on the 405 and boy, was that scary.”

Pregnant and reluctant, she agreed to stay only if they could make their home far from the free-way and far from the heat.

With a little California magic, their wish was granted and they moved into their first home – on Enchanted Way in Pacific Pali-sades.

“We still remember the address – we had never lived in a house before; we were form New York,” Rachelefsky said. “It wasn’t luxu-ry but it was our house and you got up in the morning and there was the ocean and the city and mountains. It was wonderful.”

The couple remembers a small, very intimate Palisades – one that doesn’t quite exist anymore, they said, knowing they were lucky to

be a part of it.“For the first two years, we

would eat a lot of our meals on the beach. I would come home, pick up a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chick-en and we’d eat dinner on the beach and our kids would be in their night-gowns,” Rachelefsky said. “To us, it was a totally different world.”

As his fellowship with UCLA came to a close, the young doctor had job offers pouring in from all across the country from St. Louis to New York to Atlanta. The choice was theirs.

“We were so spoiled by Cali-fornia there was no way we were leaving,” Rachelefsky said. “We could have gone anywhere, but we didn’t want to leave Pacific Palisades.”

Rachelefsky went into practice with six other doctors, creating an allergy immunology practice and did a lot of research, teaching, speaking and writing. In addition to being local physicians, they were thought leaders involved in national and international orga-nizations – seeing patients from around the world.

Today, he and his wife make their home in the Huntington, having lived in the Palisades for more than 40 years.

“We stayed in California be-cause of the Palisades,” he said. “It was such a unique place to live.”

It is the place they raised three daughters during the days of fries and a Coke at Mort’s Deli and dollar movie night at The Bay Theatre. And it is where today, after four decades of an extremely prominent career in medicine, the two have finally found themselves with a little time to themselves.

“We met at a fraternity party

at one of those Friday night mixers when I was 16,” Gail said. “Now we’ve known each other for 54 years and we are going to get to know each other all over again. The girl from Queens and the kid from Brooklyn; we’re doing pretty good.”

Their home in the Palisades is also where Rachelefsky, a man who admits to never venturing into his own kitchen, is now taking private lessons with a chef every week.

“I love to eat. I’ve always loved to eat but my involvement in the kitchen has been nonexistent until very recently,” Rachelefsky admitted.

His wife revealed that their freezer is overflowing with frozen stocks and meats for meal prepara-tion. The doctor proudly displays his wife’s plated dinner.

Between recipes and rendez-vous, Rachelefsky plans to contin-ue mentoring young medical stu-dents and his professional goal for retirement, he said, is to develop a food allergy center to both evaluate and treat patients.

“This would be something I would chair, to help establish and get the funding and make a real impact on food allergies,” he said. “That’s my professional goal in retirement. It’s on my wish list, anyway.”

He would like it to be his lega-cy, Gail said, in addition to his pa-tients – all 100,000 of them.

With places to go, things to do and people to see, the world is their oyster – but the Palisades will al-ways be their home.

“We’ve decided, Gail and I, we are never going to leave this house,” he said. “They’ll have to carry us out feet first.”

Page 10 Palisadian-Post March 27, 2014

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After 100,000 Patients, Renowned M.D. Learns the Art of Retirement

Dr. Gary Rachelefsky, picutred with his wife Gail, recently retired from a prestigious career as an allergist-immunologist having treated nearly 100,000 patients. Rich Schmitt/Staff Photographer

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