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Photograph by Skye Dunlap
No Bones About It: Dr. Rita Segal became interested in chiropractic after a back injury led her to get her first 'adjustment.'
Pioneering chiropractor folds up her table after 21 years
Rita Segal, one of Willow Glen's first chiropractors, retires this week
By Jessica Lyons
The first time someone suggested to Rita Segal that she visit a chiropractor, she had to ask what a chiropractor was. She never would have guessed that seven years later, she would become one of Willow Glen's first.
"I hurt my back and was just not getting well," says the youthful 59-year-old doctor, sitting on a table in front of a framed poster of the nervous system. "After two and a half months, someone suggested I go to a chiropractor, and after the first adjustment I noticed a difference."
That first adjustment worked so well, Segal decided that she had found her calling. Now, after 21 years in business, three Willow Glen offices and countless back adjustments, Segal is retiring.
Longtime clients will miss Segal, and not only for her adjustments, they say.
"I wasn't only her patient. We've been real close friends since 1983," says Pam Zicovich, Segal's long-time patient, friend and eventually receptionist.
"I'm a housewife. I didn't even know how to turn a computer on. She had the patience of God to train me," Zicovich remembers. She also remembers another time Segal had tremendous patience--when she adjusted the back of Zicovich's Yorkshire Terrier.
"He'd had several epileptic seizures and she had enough heart to see if she could help him," say Zicovich, whose husband and daughter are also Segal's patients.
Friday, May 21 is Segal's last day at the small clinic on Meridian Avenue.
"I've worked my whole life," she says. "I'd like to see what not working is about. I'd like to be more available to my kids."
Segal is moving to Las Vegas to be closer to her son, Adam, and grandson, but she'll balance her time between Vegas and Colorado, where her daughter, Lauren, lives. Vegas has the better retirement community, she says, and slot machines.
"Oh, I'm the queen of slots--hardly," she jokes. Segal did win $1,200 in a dollar machine at Treasure Island, however, at her son's wedding. So maybe luck will follow her into retirement. If she has time to gamble with all of her other retirement plans, that is.
"I'd like to travel to Europe," Segal says. "I'd like to study music. I'd like to dance--tap, flamenco, whatever. I'll probably be in a band. It's never too late to learn."
No, it's not. Segal has already proved that once, so why not do it again?
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with honors--and a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter--and later having another child and working as a computer programmer for 10 years, Segal, a single mom, went back to school at the age of 34. She had decided she wanted to get into the health-care field. After exploring different avenues, Segal decided Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa was the one. She spent three years there studying anatomy, physiology and microbiology before graduating with honors in 1977, moving back to California and opening her first office in Willow Glen.
After 21 years in the business, she's become more than just a doctor to some Glenites. "My patients are my best friends," Segal says. "Some of them have been my patients for almost 20 years."
Jean Jensen is one of those long-time patients. "One time, when I was having some really serious back problems, she saw me twice a day. She would come into the office on her day off, she would call me at home to see how I was. She was really there to make sure I was okay," says Jensen, a patient of 20 years. "She's a very genuine, caring person. She's a friend as well as a doctor."
A retirement reception for Segal will be held Thursday, May 20, from 4 to 7 p.m. in the parking lot at 1231 Meridian Ave.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
