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Listen FrontierListen Frontier is a podcast exploring the investigative journalism of The Frontier and featuring conversations with those on the frontlines of Oklahoma's most important stories. Author: The Frontier
Listen Frontier is a podcast exploring the investigative journalism of The Frontier and featuring conversations with those on the frontlines of Oklahoma's most important stories. At The Frontier, our mission is to hold public officials accountable, give a voice to the powerless and tell the stories that others are afraid to tell, or that illuminate the lives of people in our community. We will shine a light on hypocrisy, fraud, abuse and wrongdoing at all levels in our community and state. We will delve into complex issues and explain them to our readers, arming them with the information they need to make change. Language: en Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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'They really were hoping that it was going to work': Inside The Frontier's California rehab investigation
Wednesday, 28 October, 2026
Imagine struggling with drug addiction and being offered a chance to start over. Free treatment in Southern California, a place to stay, and people promising to help you get your life back on track.For some Oklahomans, that offer sounded too good to pass up.But what happened when they got to California was a lot different from what they expected.In a new investigation, The Frontier's Kayla Branch tells the story of Oklahomans who traveled hundreds of miles for addiction treatment, only to find themselves caught up in a complicated system involving treatment centers, insurance companies and hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills.Kayla spent months investigating these programs, including traveling to Southern California to visit some of the facilities herself.Today, she's joining me to talk about what she found, what she saw during her trip to California, and how this investigation came together.Dylan: Let's start with how the investigation came together. How did you first hear about Oklahomans being recruited to California for drug treatment? At what point did you realize there might be something bigger going on?Kayla: It was around December of 2024. I got a call from Nathan Poppe, who works at Curbside Chronicle, who we partnered with on this story, and he said he had recently talked to a couple of different vendors for Curbside Chronicle, which is Oklahoma City's street paper, and they had told him they had gone out to California to get substance use treatment. He wanted to know if I had heard about that, and at the time I hadn't. So I told him that I would look into it and kind of see what I could find. And that was when over the next couple of months I ran into some lawsuits that had been filed by large insurance companies and I realized that these insurance companies were alleging a multi-million dollar scheme (by these rehab facilities,) and so there is probably a lot more to this story.Dylan: You were able to travel to Southern California earlier this summer to visit some of the treatment facilities you were investigating. What were you hoping to find when you got there? What was your first impression of the places that you went to look at?Kayla: Yeah, I mean, I think when you're reporting on something and you're really wanting to do an investigation or get in depth, you want to experience as much as you can of what your sources kind of went through and experienced. So a big part of it for me was that I was writing about these folks who made this 1,400 mile journey out to LA and went to these facilities sometimes in the middle of the night. So I wanted to experience as much of that as I could, hoping to make it kind of a tangible thing for people.And then on a more practical scale, we wanted to get photos of these facilities, and I really wanted to try and get folks from the rehab programs to talk to me. A lot of the contact information online for these facilities didn't work, or they connected to telemarketing messages, or my emails and letters weren’t returned. Dylan: One of the facilities you visited was the Integrity Recovery Center, where Yolanda and Dustin, who you profiled in the story, had stayed. It was described in the story as a mansion in the foothills outside of Los Angeles, with a swimming pool and other amenities. Can you describe what you saw when you went there? Kayla: The way Dustin and Yolanda described it to me was that it was the nicest house that they had ever stayed in. It's in a nice neighborhood, and so that's kind of what I was expecting. And for the most part, that is what was there when we drove out. Maybe a little dingier.Dylan: You also visited the Jewel City Treatment Center in Glendale, which had apparently closed, but still had the sign on the door. Can you tell me a little bit about that experience?Kayla: When I visited Jewel City Treatment Center, it was in more of a retail district, so it was just an office inside of an office building. They hadn't answered my phone calls or email.So I knock on the door, and nobody's answering. But there's a facility or kind of another office right next door with the door open. So I knocked on that door, and I asked this lady who was sitting there if she knew anything about Jewel City and where these people might be and if I can get in touch with them. She told me they don't come by very often except to get mail, and she thought they had closed down.That's when I called the California Department of Healthcare services to confirm that, yeah it turns out they had surrendered their license. I think just going out and being able to confirm that these places exist and that, at least in the case of Integrity, they're still open and operating. They're just not going to answer any of my questions or provide any information. I think that was really crucial to the story of how this really happened, and that there's something kind of amiss about it. Dylan: I think you did a really good job of making this clear in the story, is the difference between the promises that were made to the people who were seeking treatment compared to what some of the patients told you actually happened. I know you spoke to several Oklahomans who went through these programs. What surprised you most about their experience, and what did they tell you?Kayla: I think that the thing that surprised me the most was the level of hope that people had that this would work out. I think that just speaks to the desperation, really, that people had in those moments. “Desperate” is a word that came up a lot in these interviews with the people I talked to, where they knew something might be amiss with these offers, but they really felt like it was going to be the best chance that they had to get into a facility, to be somewhere nice, to get off the street, or have just a fresh start somewhere far away from whatever challenges you know they were experiencing at home, and so they were willing to take you know this trip all the way out to California, and they really were hoping that it was going to work.
