A Community of Care : No Stereotyping the Growing Group of AIDS Volunteers

He liked his coffee just so--not too much cream, not too much sugar. Besides himself, only his friend, Bill Wilkie, could brew it just right.

Toward the end, the coffee was important. So were other little things in life--the hugs, the fresh flowers, the slices of his favorite apple pie--that Wilkie and his wife could do for Richard, a gay man ravaged by AIDS complications.

Richard, an engineer in his early 50s, wasted away in his last three years at his cluttered Los Angeles apartment. His eyesight dimmed, his appetite worsened, and his weight plummeted. At his death in September, his 5-foot-10 frame had shriveled to 85 pounds.

Wilkie and Richard were put together by All Saints AIDS Services Center’s Buddy Program in Pasadena. The match reflects a blossoming of the ranks of AIDS volunteers. It isn’t just gay men volunteering to help AIDS service organizations anymore, the way it mostly was after the first AIDS cases were recorded in 1981. It isn’t just people who lost someone to AIDS or who know of someone who died an AIDS-related death.

These days, volunteers such as Wilkie are turning out because they believe it is the right thing to do. In the San Gabriel Valley and elsewhere, a new coalition is forming to support people with AIDS--a coalition including married men, college professors, grandmothers, teen-agers and others. One professor at Pomona College--one of the six prestigious Claremont colleges--requires his students to volunteer at an AIDS services group.

This eclectic mix will be reflected in All Saints’ annual Posada, a candlelight walk-a-thon through Old Town on Saturday that is expected to draw 4,000 people. The Posada is further testament to the way AIDS service is appealing to a mainstream community: Nearly 2,000 people have registered so far--three times the number at the same time last year--and more than $38,000 in donations have been raised, compared with almost no money last year.

Also joining the Posada are groups such as St. Andrew’s Catholic Church, the Pasadena Jewish Temple and the Pasadena Junior League Choral Pipers.

These were not the types of groups that were beating down the doors to support people with AIDS 11 years ago, said Tim Olson, Posada coordinator.

“We’re real excited,” he said. “You get groups like the Junior League Pipers? My God, who would have ever thought?”

Said the Rev. David Gillentine, pastor at Metropolitan Community Church in Pomona Valley: “What many people have called for in the past 11 years indeed has happened, in terms of mobilization of the entire community, the entire society--religious communities, schools, the medical community.”

The San Gabriel Valley has more than 700 AIDS volunteers--about 600 at All Saints, and 100 at Foothill AIDS Project in Pomona, the area’s two AIDS services agencies. Volunteers include people who sign up to hold babies with AIDS, and ministers, priests or rabbis who provide spiritual counseling.

AIDS volunteers say they are motivated because the numbers are too large to ignore. An estimated 15,000 people in the San Gabriel Valley are infected with the AIDS virus, and 1,500 of them have full-blown AIDS. Nationwide, more than 1 million people are believed to have the AIDS virus, and 160,000 people have died from AIDS complications.

The numbers make people such as Wilkie pay attention. Wilkie had visited his AIDS buddy every week for three years.

“It puts everything in perspective,” said Wilkie, 45, a marketing administrator and Pasadena resident. “When I think I had a bad day, I’d see Richard or someone down at the (AIDS) center and think, ‘My day’s not so bad after all.’ ”

Another reason people volunteer is they start putting faces with the numbers. Kindergarten teacher Lynda Ayala went to a volunteer orientation after her cousin died of AIDS last month and was convinced that she needed to help when she heard a nurse talking about an 8-year-old girl who was dying from AIDS. Every night, at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles, the girl would tremble when helicopters landed on the roof.

“She said every time a helicopter lands on the heliport, she thought it was the angels’ wings coming to get her,” said Ayala, 43. “How can we let this keep ravaging our brothers and sisters and not do anything? It’s out of control.”

Highland Park resident Jay Martorano, 33, has AIDS and says he is one of the lucky ones whose friends, lover and family members stuck around.

“There are a lot of people out there who don’t have anybody,” he said. “Or a family that turns their back on them, or friends that don’t cope and walk away.”

That’s where AIDS volunteers can help. Even for Martorano, who has a wide circle of loved ones, it helps to feel the warmth of others, such as his nurse, Paula Bluestone. She started off as his nurse and then became a friend, spending Thanksgiving dinner with Martorano and his family and bringing over her guitar to help him relax with classical music. She can read him so well that some days, she goes straight for her guitar instead of his intravenous tube, if that’s what she thinks he needs.

Not everyone is cut out for AIDS buddy work, said Martorano, who used to work as a nurse.

“I’ve found that it takes a real special person to fill that kind of role,” he said. “It’s no crime if you’re lousy at it. We’re not all equipped to do that kind of work.”

But some people ignore the epidemic or are scared off by ignorance. Like Wilkie’s 82-year-old mother, who wasn’t happy about his AIDS buddy.

“She’s afraid I’m going to catch it by sitting in the house,” Wilkie said.

That sort of attitude is changing but still stings 62-year-old Helenclare Cox, whose son, Andy Hiatt, died of AIDS at 35. Shortly after his illness was diagnosed in December, 1983, the family went public.

“I just felt early on it was important for people to know that a ‘nice’ family in Altadena could have AIDS,” said Cox, a founding member of the All Saints AIDS board.

Cox said she wishes that her son had the same sort of community support that exists now. When her son was sick, there was nowhere to go locally for camaraderie.

“He felt isolated, he really did here,” Cox said.

Now, at All Saints alone, support groups meet every day of the week except Saturday. All Saints AIDS center grew from an effort in 1987 by All Saints Episcopal Church to help people with AIDS.

The center became independent in 1988, opening an office a few blocks from the church at 126 W. Del Mar Blvd. It now is the main provider of AIDS services in the valley.

Other churches are getting involved, including a coalition called ACTS, or Altadena Congregations Together Serving. The coalition includes seven churches and one temple that helps people with AIDS and sends a message that they deserve compassion.

“The fact that churches are involved says to the entire community that we recognize the spiritual dimension, and we hope you do too,” said the Rev. Lawrence Baetti, pastor at Christ the Shepherd Evangelical Lutheran Church.

At Pomona College, Prof. Ralph Bolton requires his students to volunteer at least 40 hours at Foothill AIDS Project for his class, “The AIDS Pandemic.” Bolton said he is buoyed by the fact that many students continue their volunteer work when the class is over.

“I hope the ‘80s are passed, and what we’re seeing is a new manifestation of helping,” Bolton said. Before, “no one cared about anyone’s problems but their own.”

USC freshman Wendy Lin, a South Pasadena resident, decided to volunteer at All Saints in high school after her teacher asked students if they wanted to put together Christmas baskets for people with AIDS. Several raised their hands. Lin was the only one who showed up.

“Maybe people talk about it, but they actually don’t want to get involved. I guess they’re so afraid,” said Lin, 18.

People sometimes are afraid of volunteering with what they think might be a mostly gay crowd, said AIDS volunteer Barry Johnson, whose lover died from the disease 2 1/2 years ago. But heterosexual involvement is snowballing.

“One of the things I think has happened is that the straight community gets involved, and they go back and tell their friends that it was a neat experience,” said Johnson, 45, a Highland Park resident. “I think that’s what the straight community is afraid of--that there’ll be a bunch of swishy guys and butch girls, and that’s not what we’re about. . . . It’s just people.”