Making a House Call : USC Nursing Students Hold Health Fair for People on Skid Row

His face was dirty and glistened with sweat, his stubbly jaw was swollen by an abscessed tooth. Paul Newton, who is 45 years old and totes his belongings in a pillowcase, had already been through the lunch line and had his blood pressure checked.

But when the USC nursing student offered him a packet of condoms, Newton was defiant.

“If I loved someone enough to have sex with them,” he demanded, “do you think I would take a chance on a condom breaking?”

He has been celibate for five years, he said later, since his wife left him.

Nor was Newton, 45, interested in the bleach kits. As he well knew, the bleach was intended for sterilizing hypodermic syringes, which are often shared by drug users and thus have become a prime means of transmitting the AIDS virus.

Newton may well be “a lifelong heroin addict”--that is how he described himself, displaying the needle tracks on his right arm as proof--but he would never, ever, share needles, he declared.

If everyone on Skid Row adhered to Newton’s code--if everyone chose celibacy over sex, if the druggies never shared needles--then the AIDS virus would not be the risk that it is. But because they do not, the white-smocked young women from the USC School of Nursing gave out plenty of condoms, bleach kits and advice Thursday when they staged a health fair on Skid Row.

Except for the nursing students, it was not an extraordinary morning at Catholic Worker Hospitality Kitchen at 6th and Gladys--or the “Hippie Kitchen,” as the non-paying clientele call it. By noon about 600 people had collected lunches of salad, sodas and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Among them were a few families with children, a couple who fished junk from a dumpster and carried it away in a shopping cart, and a middle-aged woman who cradled a crude doll and stroked it as if it were real. Many people went through the lunch line twice.

And many took time to visit the nurses. Health clinics are not an unusual feature at this and some other Skid Row agencies. Giveaways of condoms and bleach kits have taken place several times in recent years in the dreary district.

But it was the first time students from the USC School of Nursing, near California Medical Center downtown, had provided such a service.

In previous years, the student nurses had conducted health fairs far from their classrooms, helping poor families in Sylmar and Pico Rivera, said Jill Houston, a project organizer.

“We decided to do this kind of project because of AIDS. The incidence is growing, and so many people who are HIV-positive aren’t even in the statistics,” Houston said.

Another student nurse, Linda Cerniga, was surprised by the high level of interest. “I went into this thinking they might be suspicious. They really seem to want what we have to offer,” she said.

Veteran health workers on Skid Row say such onetime events may have a temporary effect on the clientele, but it could have a lasting impact on the students. “It’s great exposure for the students because we need more people to come out and help,” said Jill Rotenberg of the JWCH Homeless Health Care Project. “It gives them exposure to a different population, and this is a very needy population.”

Catherine Morris, a gray-haired member of Catholic Worker, said it is important for the nurses to see beyond such generic terms as the homeless or street people. “They’ll see that, well, they may look a little shabby,” Morris said, “but many are really very nice people.”

This being the middle of the month, when the general relief checks and food stamps start running low, the line was starting to get long, with a few children scattered among the crowd. Some men teased the student nurses, who stood near posters providing vivid diagrams on how to wear a condom. “One guy wanted to know if we’d let him demonstrate,” Cerniga said.

When a woman asked nurse Dawn Trani for an extra pack of condoms, Trani said there were three in each packet.

“So I’m only supposed to have sex three times a year?” the woman asked.

Trani did not know what to say. Finally, the woman laughed. “I’m only kidding, honey. I’m only kidding.”

In addition to the condoms and the bleach kits, the nursing students also handed out hygiene kits that included toothbrushes, combs, soap and shampoo. Those were popular items.

Like many other people, Beverly Prince, 44, and Rahman Safir, 55, said they planned to give the bleach to the junkies they see in the alley.

Frank Parker, 45, decided to pass on the bleach, “but a couple of condoms might be good, you know what I mean?”

And a young man named Mike took the condoms, too.

When he was asked whether he was afraid of becoming infected with the AIDS virus, Mike paused and allowed himself a small, wry grin.

“Not now,” he said. “Because I already have it.”