AIDS Victim Flies Home Without Helper
AIDS victim Mark Sigers is at home today after battling three days to fly back from Atlanta without an attendant to care for him.
The 31-year-old San Francisco resident arrived here Thursday night on Eastern Airlines, tired but triumphant, his fist raised in the air for media members watching in the airport terminal as he exited by private limousine.
Two days earlier, Sigers was asked to leave a Delta Air Lines plane in Atlanta because he did not have an attendant with him. The national Mobilization Against AIDS continued to negotiate with Delta officials Thursday night, threatening to call for a boycott if Delta does not apologize and give Sigers his money back.
Sigers’ nurse practitioner, J. B. Mulligan, met him at the airport Thursday along with his attorney, a social worker and Ken McPherson, co-chairman of Mobilization Against AIDS.
Mulligan said Sigers needed no assistance on the flight. Eastern allowed him to fly by himself after being assured by one of his doctors that Sigers was capable of doing so.
Sigers was diagnosed with acquired immune deficiency syndrome about 1 1/2 years ago, and his face and body are covered with lesions from Kaposi’s sarcoma, a rare skin cancer often seen in AIDS patients.
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