To provide and maintain health in all my patients using natural medicine, medicine that works fast because it is quickly, easily, and safely assimilated by the body.

A disease-free L-I-F-E. Mental Clarity. Calmness of spirit. A well-being attractive to others. Ability to walk, to move without pain. Ability to interact with others. Participate in a community.

Good health and harmony to all I meet using only what is safe and natural.

Acupuncture and Herbal Formulations puts one in the center of one’s “yellow brick road” or path. Herbs is the medicine; Acupuncture frees, opens up channels for herbal formulations to flow.

Illness is brought about by negative emotions: The Liver organ’s pathology is triggered by anger, and, frustration; the hear t by excess joy; the pancreas, by worry; Lungs, are injured by grief, and, finally, the kidneys suffer from fear. One of the side effects of Acupuncture is emotional, so that when a disease pathology is corrected, the organ pathway is relaxed, and, opened so that herbs may flow through it.

When healthy, one is able to follow one’s work with clarity, and, focus. Remember negative emotions like stress block the flow of energy and blood, making one sick. Acupuncture clears these blockages. Acupuncture opens pathways, of organs, also known as, meridians, for blood and energy to flow. When these pathways are free, herbal medicine can flow. The body is in harmony and heals itself.

Maria Locsin, L. Ac., Dipl. Ac., earned her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the College of the Assumption in Manila, Philippines (1976), and, a masters in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Herbology from Emperor’s College, in Santa Monica, California (2001). Maria is certified by the California State Board of Consumer Affairs, and, The National Certification Commission for Acupuncture, and, Oriental Medicine (2000). She is licensed to practice Acupuncture, Herbology, and, Chinese Medicine. Maria also completed postgraduate studies in Solid Waste and Recycling Programs from The University of California at Los Angeles, (1990). Still a student of Chinese Medicine Maria treated hundreds of patients and held supervisory duties providing evaluations and guidance to Level I interns. Just into her first year of studies, one of her greatest accomplishments was treating her bedridden father, who was able to walk for the first time in years.

Maria has been passionately practicing Chinese Medicine since 2003. Fluent in three languages, her recent experience with Clinica Medica San Miguel includes helping seniors, and, the Spanish-speaking population with nutritional counseling and acupuncture. She takes pride in helping “my seniors of Huntington Park”. She also was on Spanish TV and radio, marketing Clinica San Miguel and preaching the benefits of Oriental Medicine. Today she shares a clinic, treating various diseases, and, ailments with other accomplished Acupuncturists in West Los Angeles. Her Chinese Medicine “ministry” sometimes takes her to homes of patients who are homebound.

In the 80s’ Maria’s had an illustrious career in New York City’s Fashion Industry working as a Designer, Merchandiser, Production Supervisor, in such companies like Kenzo Jap Boutique, SWEELO, and Gianni Sports. In 1989, Maria’s professional life included her other passion, the environment. Successfully organizing and participating in UCLA’s Extension Program’s series of lectures on Solid Waste Management & Recycling. As the Executive Assistant to the VP of Recycling, Community & Public Affairs of Los Angeles, Maria assisted in the implementation and compliance of the
Integrated Waste law: Assembly Bill 939. She help run educational programs and assisted policy makers, garbage collectors, environmental managers of California’s North, and East Valley, West Hollywood, Azuza, Pasadena, and the Bay Cities. She also gave lectures, spearheaded, and coordinated various Special Recycling Projects including “This is Cycler”, a robot, teaching recycling to Preschoolers throughout Southern California. Gathering together environmental groups like the “Californians Against Waste”, the Earth Communications Office, television, and, film stars environmental group, and, Jolie Jone’s “Take it Back Foundation”, the music business’ recycling conscience, she coordinated the demise of the Long Box, replacing boxed CDs. “Let’s Shrink Wrap CDs”. In the mid-90s, while fulfilling her true life-long dream of becoming a doctor, Maria,
a part-time student, juggled her studies, helped patients while owning, and,
operating a food vending and catering business in Santa Monica. In 2003, Maria decided it was time to be a doctor. She sold “Hotdog Mama”, and, “hung a shingle” at 2001 South Barrington in West Los Angeles.

Today, Maria sees patients at her Barrington Clinic 2 to 3 times a week. Maria also arranges presentations to senior communities that include details on their ability to heal themselves. She meets with corporations and makes presentations to their HR Departments, talks to their employees about gaining, staying focused, working with good spirit, keeping balanced at a busy day at the office. Everyday she touts, “Health is managed like wealth package to employers. Her health tune-up programs are a success in staying and gaining focused, staying relaxed through a “busy day at the office”, eliminating absenteeism, lowering sick days.

Maria spreads the good news: Cut costs, manage, increase and maximize productivity with health benefits through natural and preventive programs. She believes in the power of healing oneself with natural medicine, using different modalities to chase and banish disease. She states, “Disease is unacceptable. Get rid of it.” To live well, and, disease-free, is her tenet.

“WE CAN DO IT.”

My name is Maria Locsin. I got laid off from a job I loved working where I was learning about the environment, while assisting the vice president of a top 10 American corporation. I was lucky. I was the executive assistant of and “sat at the feet” of the man who started recycling and community buy back centers in the USA. That was 1989. A year later, the first Earth Day was marked in our calendars.

A new world that I had only sensed before, opened my consciousness to caring, nurturing what I touched, breathed, interacted with. Ultimately, the lesson was singular: I was responsible. With my boss, I taught and ran the UCLA Extension Program on Recycling, and Solid Waste Management. I also ran around Southern California with CYCLER, the robot. We taught the 3Rs “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” to preschoolers. I loved my work. I loved making a difference. I loved learning how to be accountable to myself and to my work. In November, I was the first to be let go; by March, the recycling center was sold to another company. Collecting garbage is bigger business than recycling. That was 1993. It broke my heart but that was terrific because it propelled me into a reinvention.

I saw excitement with making a living; now, it was time to do the work I was meant to do. What did I want to be when I was 7 years of age? I had always wanted to be a doctor. I lost my compass when, starting with college, my mother passed. I had taken care of her since I was a child. I had witnessed and been close by to her 15 surgeries. I had lofty dreams but I joined the workplace, becoming good in most of what I did, but those were all just jobs. It was time to follow my passion. Getting laid off was an opportunity to reinvent self.

I had been in business for myself since I was 24. I love business! Watching how my mother’s health issues, treatments, and therapy, cut her life 3 days short of turning 59, I had forgotten about medicine. She was too young to die. In 1994, I had gotten very sick. I decided it was time to start cleaning up my act. I began with detoxifying my poisons: cigarettes, alcohol, a hectic party life. I was sick and unemployed! Western drugs made me sicker. I discovered herbs and acupuncture. When my unemployment ran out, I opened a hotdog business. I cried my heart out at the end of that first day. I had made $20.00. What happened to my dreams?! I had prepared for success with 12 years of excellent foreign schooling, and travels abroad!! It was time to make a decision: that I was going to be the very best hotdog vendor ever created so that I could afford to study Chinese Medicine. In September 1995, I entered The Emperor’s College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Santa Monica, California.

In 1996, I returned home to visit an aging and ailing father. I was in my first year of studying Oriental Medicine. In order to help my father I brought with me heat modalities and herbs. He was 83 and bedridden. My father whom everyone had once feared has now become this shrunken old man who could not even stand. With a beginner’s knowledge of Oriental medicine, I worked on him, got him up, made him use my mother’s wheelchair and soon after he was using my mother’s old walker. This enabled him to join the rest of the family at the dining table for meals! Chinese medicine works fast! One of many facts about the medicine that endeared and cemented itself in my heart.

I was Santa Monica, California’s famed “Hotdog Mama” for 10 years. I finally closed that shop and hung a shingle as Maria Locsin, L.Ac. in 2003. Recently, I joined a group of MDs specializing on seniors. I also share space at a very busy clinic with other natural doctors and therapists. I know that the body heals itself. Natural medicine assimilates, it nourishes, and the spirit thrives. We are aware that life is a short journey. We need to stay informed and try natural remedies to heal illness. This is my passion, my path. Thanks for reading. I hope to heal you soon!

By Oliver Lukacs

Staff Writer

June 6 2003 — She goes by “Hotdog Mama,” and her sales pitch is: “Take a bite of my hotdog, you’ll want it to be bigger.”

She’s been using that line for years, and it seems to be working. Or maybe it’s her personality, or it could be the veggie or kosher Polish hotdogs you can only get from her vending cart at 5th and Arizona, right outside the Santa Monica Post Office, where she’s been virtually every day for the last nine years.

“You got to be funny for people to remember you, or you got to be notorious and pose nude for Playboy magazine, then marry some movie star who is old and rich. That’s how you get famous in America, babe. Or the good old way, you produce something.”

Wearing blue jeans and beat-up white sneakers, Maria Locsin, or “the hotdog lady” as she is known to some, has been trying to become a successful entrepreneur and produce the American Dream with every hotdog sold.

But it hasn’t been easy. Of the six locations open to vendors in the Downtown (there are nine vendors on the pier, and 24 on the Third Street Promenade), Locsin’s spot by the post office is the only one taken. The other vendors have packed up and left.

“Nobody knows my woes but you,” she said theatrically, violins playing in the background through her little portable radio. “I loved this business until 9/11. But I have to show up rain or shine, honey.”

Like so many others, Locsin’s business was hit hard by the dot.com bust in the late 1990s and the terrorist attacks on the East Coast nearly two years ago. Before the economy took a nosedive, the bustling foot traffic that is the lifeblood of street vendors put $300 in her pocket everyday.
“You see this wall,” Locsin said, pointing to the empty waist-high brown brick partition in front of the post office. “It was always full of people sitting down eating. Then the jobs fell off, the jobs closed up, now nobody sits here.”

Locsin reluctantly admits she now averages $100 a day, with half of that going to “product, product, product. I give you the best product for the least amount of money,” she said.
The exodus of vendors from Downtown coincided with the dot-com bust that preceded 9/11, said Mark Richter, the City’s economic development manager.

While street vending “is always a risky activity” because of its reliance on foot traffic, Richter said that the area spanning 4th, 5th, and 6th Streets has “more activity now, giving vendors an opportunity to be successful.”

In April, the City Council voted to re-implement a lottery system for the Downtown carts and set standards for applicants to ensure quality. It also added a new monthly fee to the two-year permitting system, bringing the total to $825 a year, or 10 percent of the amount paid by vendors on the pier, who do ten times the business.

Despite a slumping economy, Locsin — who speaks three languages, has a degree in English literature and is studying between sales for a state exam to become a licensed acupuncturist — isn’t giving up on her Downtown spot.

Rain or shine, she still wakes up every day at 5 a.m. in her rent-controlled apartment in the city, drives her black pick-up truck to the valley to get her three-wheeled-500-pound-metal-chrome-colored vending cart, drives back to Santa Monica, lugs it up the curb by herself and parks it in the shade between two towering ficus trees.

“Relish, onion, jalapeno, sauerkraut?” Locsin asks of one of her regulars, while smearing mustard on a kosher beef hotdog. Her customers, she said, don’t just come for the food. “They come here because they know they are going to get something more than a hotdog.”
“They get a little patch of heaven, a little quiet time, a little classical music, a little conversation, and I’m always good for a laugh,” the recently naturalized Filipino immigrant who is half-Chinese and half-Spanish said in an English accent.