Dedicated Nurse Opens Home, Heart to AIDS Patients

Marjorie Ann Richey is a nurse in Thousand Oaks who has become the unofficial den mother for AIDS patients in the county.

In 1988, after discovering that people with AIDS had nowhere to go for friendship and moral support, she began organizing small social gatherings for AIDS patients.

Not only did she bring them together at a Thousand Oaks hospital, she encouraged them to share their grief and hope in her house, where they regularly discuss the problems they face and their fears of death.

Of the 22 members who have attended meetings since the group formed nearly three years ago, five have died. But one thing Richey’s home lacks is a pall of death. Richey’s kitchen is the scene of laughter. It is the setting for Christmas parties and birthdays, barbecues and breakfasts, not therapy and counseling.

“One gentleman even brought lobsters and large shrimp to celebrate his birthday,” said Richey, 49. “They’ve become very good friends.”

An infection control nurse who has worked at Los Robles Regional Medical Center for 20 years, Richey has made her mark in the medical community by finding a place in her home for people who feel like outcasts.

Through her work at the hospital, she has come in contact with most of the patients who have been diagnosed with acquired immune deficiency syndrome. She formed two AIDS groups, one which meets at the hospital and another smaller group that meets in her home each month.

Both groups include homosexuals and heterosexuals, men and women who have been diagnosed with AIDS and others who have tested positive for the AIDS virus. Family members and friends also attend the meetings.

Before the groups were formed, patients in the eastern end of Ventura County had no local support base.

“There were no groups in that end of the county when she started that group,” said Martina Rippey, a public health nurse and chairwoman of the county AIDS Task Force. “Most of the other groups meet in a hospital. But when it occurs in somebody’s home, it has a less formal spirit to it.”

Richey also gives AIDS classes to a group of 13- to 25-year-old inmates at the California Youth Authority facility in Camarillo.

Jan Budnik, president of the prison ministry for the Women Aglow Fellowship in Westlake, said she coaxed Richey to come to the CYA school last October.

Students were at first skeptical about what they considered yet another lecture from a nurse. But many listened after Richey began talking about her support groups and the people who have died.

“She says, ‘They die, and I miss them,’ ” Budnik said. “So it’s not just a nurse talking from a book. She really is concerned.”

Last year, Richey received a national award from the Hospital Corp. of America for her work with AIDS patients. But the work also makes Richey a target of what she calls ignorant questions.

When an acquaintance asked, “Do you really let them eat off your plates?” Richey said she was irritated.

“I’m not an AIDS activist, but I really feel they have to get their information straight.”

Richey is a matronly woman whose home has been the meeting place for a group of 13 people since June, 1988. On a recent evening, four members of what Richey calls “her group,” dropped by for an informal dinner. Although members of the group agreed to talk to a reporter, they asked not to be identified.

A 27-year-old Simi Valley woman who was one of the group’s founding members still attends, even though her husband died of AIDS two years ago.

“These are special friends. It’s a place where I don’t have to worry about saying anything about anything,” she said. “When you’re around other people, they don’t want to talk about AIDS. They avoid it.”

A 27-year-old man from Agoura said he was terrified when he came to his first meeting with the other AIDS patients two years ago.

“It was like this total anxiety about coming--what are these people like?” he said. “It wasn’t like a group encounter where people hold hands and sing. It was the anticipation.”

Another 40-year-old Northridge man said he finds Richey’s house a home away from home. Last year, when he suffered a heart attack, it was a double blow to his health.

“I don’t get much support at home, so it’s nice to get away from that,” he said. At home the problem is denied, he said, despite the fact that he has lost a number of friends. “I’ve lost 14 people so far. And one probably won’t last the year.”

Richey said meeting others with AIDS has given the members of her group the strength to face their illness. Some members are adept at making fun of their condition, as dire as it sometimes seems to outsiders.

“If you want to go on a diet, have we got the diet for you,” joked a 47-year-old Westlake woman.

Despite their black humor, members of the group are quick to praise Richey, whom they met when they were patients or while visiting relatives at Los Robles hospital.

The man from Agoura said he has seen Richey quickly educate medical workers who have been reluctant to touch AIDS patients for fear of contracting the disease.

Some nurses “were putting on wet suits to give me lunch,” he said. “She sets them straight. They all respect Margie, and they know she tells them the truth.”

Richey is reluctant to take credit for helping people. It is a friendship that goes both ways, she said. When her mother became ill last year, members of the group came to her assistance.

“They’re really my friends,” she said quietly. “They’re good to me. I feel good when they’re around.”