AIDS Hits Home in the East Valley : Public health: The area is reported to have the fourth-highest rate of cases in Los Angeles County.

Sally Rivera, a leathery addict with a tattoo reading “Born To Die,” ticks off the names of three friends who died of AIDS.

“Everybody out here shares needles,” the 39-year-old transient says, scanning the traffic along San Fernando Road near Pacoima. Sure it’s dangerous, she acknowledges, “but when you’re sick, you don’t care. You just want the needle.”

Jose Bernardo Torres tugs at a grimy cap that says “Playboy-Members Only” as he waits in line with other homeless men for a free lunch at the Hansen Dam Recreation Area.

“No, no,” the 45-year-old laborer says to a woman passing out AIDS information for a local health agency. He doesn’t need any pamphlets because he is in no danger of catching the disease, he explains in Spanish. He doesn’t use drugs and he isn’t gay. He doesn’t even have a girlfriend, he admits, smiling in embarrassment.

Yes, sometimes, when he gets a little money together from gardening, he sees a prostitute over on San Fernando Road. When asked if he uses a condom, he raises his eyebrows and then, ever so politely, says he has no money for condoms.

Rivera and Torres help illustrate why the eastern San Fernando Valley has the fourth-highest rate of AIDS cases in Los Angeles County, according to Department of Health Services statistics. Homelessness, intravenous drug use and ignorance about the dangers of unprotected sex are problems that have crept out of the inner city to the suburbs in recent years, health experts say.

Experts said other factors may be the large, though not highly visible, gay community in the East Valley and the growth of the area’s Latino population, which presents language and cultural barriers to AIDS education and prevention.

According to the statistics, there have been 920 AIDS cases since 1981 in the East Valley, which includes North Hollywood, Pacoima, Sun Valley, Studio City and Tujunga.

That total breaks down to a rate of 284 cases per 100,000 people, which ranks the area below only West Hollywood, Central Los Angeles and Long Beach.

People who still think of the Valley as a suburban enclave of single-family homes and back yard barbecues might raise their eyebrows at those statistics. But some people knowledgeable about acquired immune deficiency syndrome in the Valley do not.

“I’m not surprised,” said Greg Britt, director of health education at Valley Community Clinic in North Hollywood, which offers free AIDS testing.

“One of the things that is really anomalous is that there is a lot of HIV and AIDS out here but not a lot of community awareness about prevention and how the disease is transmitted.”

One thing many people may not realize is that there is a large gay population in the eastern Valley, Britt said.

“There are gay bars like Rawhide and Oil Can Harry’s,” Britt said, along with several gay bathhouses.

But, unlike West Hollywood, where homosexuals have an active and visible presence, gay Valley residents may not even consider themselves homosexual.

“These are somewhat closeted gay men,” Britt said. They may have sex with other men from time to time, but they don’t tell their wives and girlfriends, and they don’t stop thinking of themselves as heterosexual.

“In West Hollywood, they say, ‘I’m gay and if I’m having gay sex I’m high-risk, so I’d better take precautions,’ ” said Britt. “If you don’t identify yourself as being at high risk, you may not take precautions, even though you’re having sex with men.”

Terry Smith, the program manager of health education services at El Proyecto del Barrio, an agency that does AIDS prevention work, said minority groups in the East Valley present a special challenge to AIDS workers.

“Many Latinos and African-Americans still consider AIDS to be a gay white male disease,” he said. As a result, some AIDS education is simply ignored.

El Proyecto’s workers pass out pamphlets, bleach for cleaning needles, and condoms. It is a delicate assignment, and workers go in pairs. Merely bringing up the subject of AIDS offends some people.

Some Latino men and women refuse to accept condoms, even if they would like to do so, out of fear of what their partner might think.

“If a Latina came home with a condom, her partner might assume she was messing around,” said Dina Harandi, 32, of Tarzana, one of the outreach workers. “She might get a beating.”

El Proyecto workers try to keep their dealings with people on the street light, offering bleach and condoms to drug users and prostitutes, but backing off if people are unwilling to hear their pitch.

“El Proyecto has been the biggest help,” said Rivera, who has lived on the streets on and off for 10 years. “Because of them, I notice people out here bleaching their outfits.”

Rivera obtains her needles from a diabetic friend and continues to test negative for HIV.

Handing out condoms, however, does not ensure that they will be used, said Harandi. Some prostitutes, she said, agree not to require a customer to use one for $5 or $10 extra.

Some workers said AIDS statistics may be skewed in the East Valley simply because testing is widely available there.

“I think the reason the rate is higher here is more people are being tested,” said Pamela Mock, 26, of Northridge, an El Proyecto worker.

Besides the Valley clinic in North Hollywood, there are several other clinics in the area that advertise low-cost, or free, AIDS testing.

Moreover, the East Valley is home to many recent immigrants who are required to get an AIDS test when applying for a green card, which could further inflate the number of cases reported.

“These results could be due to a combination of things,” said Deborah Openden, program coordinator for the Los Angeles Shanti program, a counseling service. But whatever the reason for them, the numbers show that the AIDS education message is not getting through to some people in the East Valley.

While AIDS prevention messages are highly visible elsewhere, they may not be reaching the people most vulnerable to the disease in the Valley.

Britt said it’s time Valley residents recognize that AIDS has come to the suburbs.

“This stuff is going on in your back yard,” he said.