They meet several times a week in the car park at Vons supermarket in Mar Vista, but there is no subject. There’s not even a harsh medical prognosis for 70-year-old David Mays, one of the founding members of Coffee Clutch.
“This is one of the main topics in our conversation,” said Paul Morgan, 45, of Klatch Regular.
Maze is a cancer survivor with a complete package of illness, including diabetes, a distorted heart, and kidney failure. However, ever since I met him almost two years ago, he has repeatedly said he doesn’t want dialysis treatment even if he extends his life.
“I got it because it’s a lot of time since your day,” said Morgan, a teacher at a school that lives nearby. “I think people go on dialysis for 15 minutes before you go straight to work. But really, that’s part-time work.”
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a columnist for the Los Angeles Times since 2001. He has won over 12 National Journalism Awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
His treatment would require him to visit the dialysis centre four hours a week, three times a week, Mays said.
“For the rest of my life.”
“I don’t think I can do that,” said Klatcher Kit Bradley, 70, who lives with his dog Lea in a van near a supermarket.
I met Mays in October 2023. He lived in Chevrolet Malibu in Downtown Garage, part of the Safe Parking LA program. Maze later moved to an apartment in East Hollywood where he still lives, but his health continues to deteriorate.
“He’s in stage 5,” said Dr. Sitt Sitt Aung, a nephrologist at Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles.
Center David Mays enjoys a morning gathering with Paul Morgan and Kit Bradley in the Vons parking lot in West Los Angeles on June 25, 2025.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
For such patients, Aung said death could be imminent. She said she has had many conversations about his treatments, including dialysis at the clinic and self-management at home. But not everyone is doing well with dialysis, she adds, and when patients make informed choices, “We respect their wishes.”
Maze has a refreshingly healthy attitude about mortality. The multi-billion dollar industry caters to those who want to live younger and longer, with around 25% of the massive Medicare spending spent on patients last year in their lives, many of whom choose to expand their lives.
Maze was realistic, not fatal, but realistic when I knew him. He told me he didn’t think courage, faith, and spirituality had anything to do with his desire to naturally take the course.
“It transcends those things,” he said.
He is in peace with his destiny, he explained.
On a recent day in his apartment, I watched Maze’s loading medication from over 20 vials into weekly pill organizers.
“I was able to do most of this while I was sleeping,” he said as he placed a medication similar to miniature jelly beans. This is for his kidneys, and it is for his heart, his blood pressure.
A photo of a bottle of medicine and a close friend is at David Mays’ table in his apartment in East Hollywood.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Each compartment had 18 tablets. And he said none of the things that torment him would treat him.
“You have to keep doing it and do it, just to stay on a sustainable level,” he said. “It’s not… I took something like this and I feel good.”
The two women in Maze’s life are heartbroken about his condition, but respectfully refuse to attempt dialysis.
“I don’t want him to suffer to place other people,” said Jennifer Natt, 47, daughter of Maese, Maes.
Her parents divorced when she and her siblings were young, and Nat had no connection to Maze until recently. She was faced with her own trial, including homeless people, Natt said.
Father and daughter began to connect in the fall of 2024.
“We talk for hours every day. It’s like a non-stop festival of catching up,” they discovered that they had the same cheeky humor and pragmatism, and similar traits and interests.
“We like big words and thick books,” Natt said.
The other woman is Helena Bake of Perth, Australia, who is affectionately called “valuable.” They met in 1985 when Mays was visiting London, when 18-year-old Bake was working at a restaurant he visited with a friend. After Bake moved to Australia, Mays visited her many times and approached the whole family.
“He was lovely,” Bake said. Bake isn’t surprised by Maze’s attitude about her health deterioration. “He’s always very positive and very practical. He has this wonderful view of the world and people in his life. It’s as much of a gift he has.”
Having obtained Social Security payments, Mays sets up a go-humm page to scatter it around his favorite Australian locations to pay for his cremation and burn ashes.
Recently, his medical appointments with several doctors, and an occasional ER visit, have been in the way of one of Maze’s favorite activities, the Vons’ parking gatherings.
David Mays “always are very positive and very practical. He has this wonderful view of the world and people in his life. It’s as much of a gift he has,” says a longtime friend.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Mays has worked as a live-in elder care provider for many years in the Mar Vista area, where he bumped into Bradley at the park or Morgan, a strip mall that includes grocery stores. A few years ago, they grabbed coffee around 7am and created the habit of wandering around near Maze’s car. Bradley’s dogs often jump into the car, with Von employees named Elvis coming out for a smoke break, others coming and going.
“I had a cousin who was diabetic and he one day called my mother and said, ‘I’m not doing it anymore,'” Morgan said the other day. His mother was not supportive at first, he told Clutch, but she came over after hearing her nephew’s explanation. “Who can judge someone about the choices they make in that situation?”
“We have a 2-8 year kidney waiting list,” Mays said. “Let’s say it [in] Kidneys were available for 4 and 5 years. Your body can reject it…and you will come back to the drawing… I told Precious about this a year and a half ago… and she said, “I have to hang up now because I have to handle this.” And the next time I spoke to her, she said, “I got it.” ”
Maze said he didn’t want to be “a prisoner of a machine-like process.”
“And you have to make this indefinitely. That’s not to say you’re in it for a couple of years…” he said. “Yes. A rest in your life.”
“I’ve seen people on dialysis,” said former musician Bradley. “I would rather have to go if I had to go.”
Morgan said his father, who passed away last year, had kidney problems in the end and resisted extreme measures to extend his life.
“He’s not committing suicide, he’s not like David,” Morgan said. “About David, he was always very determined about it. We never felt like we could shake him or he was on the fence.”
When he first resisted dialysis, Mays said the doctor set up him in a room with a video explaining the process.
“I saw it all and that was the clincher,” Mays said. “By the time I’ve seen it, I’m just going to ‘Oh hell no’. ”
It’s not that he wants to die, Mays said. He wants to live on his own terms.
“The whole irony is all the people I have around me. They’re going to go like this. I can get from them.
He has his clutch companions, he has precious things, he has his daughter again in his life.
“The people around me care about you, you care about you, you can deal with… death. And I told my doctor I would rather live a short period of time, but I feel I’m living a long term and living miserable.
“Additionally, I’m 70. I’m not like I’m 30, I have that much life to live. I’m at my age. I want to go even further, but I need to close immediately.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
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