Counselors Pound Streets to Get AIDS Message to IV Drug Users

Martin Telles leans over the steering wheel of the motor home, scanning the Pico Rivera neighborhood for intravenous drug users.

Tattoos, long-sleeve shirts, a certain stance--these are some of the things Telles looks for as he slowly drives past houses separated by chain-link fences and parks where men in dark clothing sit alone on park benches.

“I think I see something over there,” Telles says to a companion.

Telles parks the motor home, tucks a yellow pencil behind one ear and walks up to four men sitting in front of an auto repair shop on Whittier Boulevard.

‘Serious Problem’

He extends a brown arm dominated by dark green tattoos and squats on the pavement so the men do not have to stand. They listen and nod as Telles starts talking about AIDS, how it can be spread when intravenous drug users share needles and how people can protect themselves.

“It’s a very serious problem, man,” Telles tells them, handing the men white business-sized cards, printed in Spanish and English, that advise against sharing needles and having sex without a condom.

One of the men stands up, saying, “Hey, I got somebody for you to talk to.”

He returns with another man who says he had been using intravenous drugs off and on for more than 15 years. Telles explains how to clean needles with bleach as the new man listened and nodded.

“I heard about that, but I didn’t know how I could do it,” the man says.

Another interrupts. “Hey, man, how do we know the cops won’t be busting us for carrying bleach around?”

“They’re gonna look at your arms,” Telles says. “They’re gonna know anyway.”

He leaves the men with some AIDS cards, shakes hands and says, “OK, brothers, we’re gonna get in the wind.”

Telles, a street outreach counselor, is coordinating the first Los Angeles County-funded program to take to the streets to educate some of the area’s estimated 100,000 intravenous drug users about acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Only about 3% of Los Angeles County’s 4,887 diagnosed AIDS victims are intravenous drug users, compared to estimates as high as 60% in metropolitan New York. But nationwide, needle users are the fastest-growing category of people with the disease and the main way it is transmitted to heterosexuals.

More than 1,500 of the AIDS cards are being distributed through the county program, but Telles is frustrated that the state and county do not allow the counselors to give away condoms and bleach. Telles said he often explains how to clean needles with bleach because users want to know how to protect themselves.

Literacy Is Concern

“Prostitutes and IV drug users aren’t known for high IQs, you know?” Telles said. “Some of them can’t even read this card. The cards that we’re giving out--that isn’t the answer. There has to be something to encourage a behavioral change.”

The Los Angeles County AIDS Commission has recommended that the Board of Supervisors endorse the distribution of bleach and condoms. The board majority has resisted such proposals in the past, but the recommendation is pending.

Another problem for the street outreach program is hiring the right ethnic mix of counselors, Telles said. The day he was in Pico Rivera, Telles had fellow drug counselor Gary Day, an Anglo, wait in the motor home while he broke the ice with the Latinos on Whittier Boulevard.

A few days before that, some people at the Ramona Gardens housing project in Los Angeles were reluctant to speak to Day, thinking he was a police officer. “They see him right away and they say, ‘He’s big and white and has this college look about him,’ ” Telles said.

“But then there are other areas,” said Day, 26, “where I might be able to talk to people who wouldn’t open up to Martin.”

Telles and Day work for the Los Angeles Centers for Alcohol and Drug Abuse, one of four agencies that contract with the county to provide AIDS education. The agency recently coordinated the 30-day blitz of AIDS education in selected areas of the county and is continuing the program on a more limited basis.

Having the counselors in the street is what improves the agency’s credibility, and that is the key to reaching needle users.

“You’ve gotta get plugged into the grapevine,” Telles said. “If you can do that, the rest is a piece of cake.”

Telles, 41, worked with ex-convicts for about 15 years in the San Gabriel Valley, and said street credibility is his biggest asset.

He gets tips about drug hot spots from users on the street and people he visits in drug clinics.