Topics / HEALTH : AIDS Program Draws 200 Students : Education: Inspired by a teacher who has the disease, San Gabriel High youths attend seminar on HIV and safe sex. They will take message to their classmates.

More than 200 students at San Gabriel High School in Alhambra gave up their scheduled day off Friday to learn more about combatting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

They were inspired by English teacher Joe Cornish’s public announcement that he has AIDS and the AIDS-related death of a school counselor’s best friend. Sponsored by Pasadena’s AIDS Service Center, the program on HIV and AIDS awareness included lectures and instruction in safe sex, including the proper use of condoms by rolling them onto bananas.

Students who took part in the session will visit classrooms to discuss safe sex during the school’s AIDS Awareness Week from March 7-11, said Susan Cohen, coordinator of education and training at the service center.

The daylong program concluded in the school’s auditorium, where two HIV-positive women, Sarah Hart, 29, and Viviana Martinez, 21--along with Hart’s AIDS-diagnosed daughter Jessica, 10--discussed how they cope with the deadly virus.

“It’s sad because even after all these years, people really are not listening,” said Hart, who told the students she probably was infected with HIV in 1982 when she was 17 but was not officially diagnosed until Jessica fell ill with pneumonia three years ago.

“(People) don’t realize that there are choices they can make in their lives that can save them from AIDS,” she said.

Jessica quieted the audience when she talked about how her elementary-school friends reacted when she told them she had AIDS.

“I used to have a whole handful of good friends,” she said in a tiny voice that was barely picked up by the microphone. “But then, when I told them (about having AIDS), I found out that I didn’t have such good friends after all.”

Students said the program had shaken off their “It won’t happen to me” attitudes.

“The thing that makes an impact is when people with AIDS come and talk about it,” said junior Carly Sheffer, 16. She added that Cornish, the teacher who helped make AIDS awareness an issue at the school, could not make the program because of illness.