President and founding member of the Friends of Rockhaven, Joanna Linkchorst is a mother of two, a self-proclaimed “history dork” and long-time resident of the Crescenta Valley, located just north of Los Angeles. Trained as a docent at the Autry Museum of the American West, Linkchorst brought her enthusiasm for history to Rockhaven, a former sanitarium for women, now owned by the city of Glendale, CA, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Linkchorst was involved in educating the local community about the historic treasure in their midst and advocated for the preservation of the site as a museum. Her efforts and those of her fellow preservationists have resulted in secured appropriations from the state of California of eight million dollars, which are slated to be used to convert the facility into the Rockhaven Mental Health History Museum. Says Linkchorst, “The Friends of Rockhaven look forward to working with the City of Glendale to establish a park and museum at Rockhaven that will allow the public to learn about the history of this amazing site.”

Agnes Richards was a pioneering American nurse who devoted her career to advocating for the well-being of patients in psychiatric hospitals. She was born in Germany in 1881 (or 1883, depending on the historical source). She emigrated to the United States at the age of 12 to live with her father in Nebraska. As soon as she was old enough, she took a job at a mental hospital, which was the first of many jobs she held in the field of mental health treatment. In 1904, she married her first husband, David Travis, and together they worked at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. Soon after their son was born, Travis passed away. At this time, Richards put herself through nursing school and began a life-long career in psychiatric nursing. After working at several facilities in the Midwest and Southern California, most notably Patton State Hospital in San Bernadino, Richards used $1,000 she had saved to purchase “a small rock cottage on a lush, tree-lined street in what was then called Verdugo City” (now Glendale). This cottage was the beginning of Rockhaven Sanitarium for Women, which Richards founded in 1923 and operated for 44 years until just before her death in 1967.