The Sunday Profile : Amid the small towns of the Central Valley, Barbara and Wes Creager provide a haven for people with AIDS who have no place else to go, offering them . . . : A Ray of Hope

For Michael Ward, hope was lost and found on the same day.

It was cold the afternoon Barbara Creager saw him sleeping alone in front of a Bakers field mission, all his possessions packed in a single duffel bag.

She had come looking for him after a social worker told her that she had seen him wandering the streets, sick, with nowhere to stay.

“There he was, this little guy, and I said, ‘You must be Michael, and I’m Barbara, and I’ve come to take you home,’ ” Creager recalls. “And when we drove to the house and he walked through that door, he said, ‘I can finally unpack my bags.’ ”

Ward died eight months later of complications from AIDS. On his deathbed, he told her: “ ‘Wherever you go and talk to people about HOPE, tell them about me, and I won’t have died in vain.’ ”

HOPE is the Home of Positive Expectations, a house that Barbara and Dr. Wes Creager have set aside as a haven for homeless people with AIDS. Established four years ago, it is the only place of its kind in Kern, Tulare and Kings counties, providing room and board, solace and support, but not the medical care found in a traditional hospice.

AIDS has left no part of the state untouched. But in the quiet farming communities of the Central Valley, it is viewed as a distant enemy. The entire area, with a population of more than 1.5 million, does not have a hospice solely dedicated to AIDS patients, says Tim Reese, executive director of the Central California AIDS Foundation, which serves HIV patients.

“There is a tremendous need for hospice and residential care in Central California,” he says. “To me it is abominable that we have to send people to Los Angeles or other areas to die.” And, Reese adds, many AIDS patients in the politically conservative region are thrown out of their homes.

Such was Michael Ward’s case, and his story is typical of the 21 “boys,” as Barbara Creager calls them, who have so far stayed at HOPE. Each has had little or no money, or has been shunned by family and friends, or simply has had nowhere else to go. During their stays, some have gotten well enough to leave, some have made peace with and returned to their families, and some have been moved to a nearby hospital to die.

“We have people come from as far as Ventura County, people that have been living under bridges, people no one else wants,” says Barbara Creager, 64. “Many end up dying on the streets. That’s why I felt we had to do something.”

A petite, immaculately groomed woman with a lilting Southern drawl, she never dreamed that her “something” would take the form of HOPE. But for her and her husband of 47 years, working with AIDS patients is only the most recent crusade in a lifetime devoted to various causes.

Before creating HOPE, Barbara worked with Hospice, an international organization that recruits volunteer companions for terminally ill patients. When it folded four years ago, she hoped to work with a similar organization serving AIDS patients but none existed in Tulare County. After attending a two-day training session for home caregivers in Fresno, and seeing firsthand the need for a house for the ill, the Creagers decided to act on their own.

Wes Creager, a retired physician who still works frequent shifts at the local emergency room, enlisted fellow doctors to treat AIDS patients. Barbara hit up every club and church in the area for donations. Finally, the couple plunked down $20,000 and bought a house large enough to accommodate four boarders on the outskirts of Porterville. They also opened an office in town, HOPE Inc., to provide counseling and referral services. A few months later, their first tenant moved in.

All in all, it has been quite an endeavor for the couple, who had just finished building their dream home up in the hills. But the Creagers have never led a run-of-the-mill life.

They married as teen-agers, high school sweethearts from the town of Tulare. When her father, a pastor with the Church of God, moved to Louisville, Ky., a few years later, the newlyweds followed, and their lives became entwined with their faith.

“We traveled with my dad, and would hold these religious campaigns all over the country,” Barbara says. “That’s the way our two kids grew up, in a church atmosphere.”

It was also an atmosphere rife with music, and Barbara thrived on singing for congregations throughout the South as well as for several radio shows, including her own.

Wes, meanwhile, made a good living as a builder and carpenter (although he had to do his share of harmonizing) until an encounter with the Third World led to an about-face.

“We went down to a religious convention in Haiti in the ‘60s, and we saw poverty you just wouldn’t believe,” he recalls. “At the time we were doing well, but I thought there had to be more to life. So I decided to go to medical school.”

He was 32, and by the time he finished premed, medical school, internship and residency, 10 years had gone by.

“I had to hold down three jobs,” Barbara says, adding with a laugh: “I had one kid in college, one in high school and one in medical school.”

Near the end of his training, desperate for money, Wes accepted a scholarship that hinged on his working as a rural physician for three years after graduation.

He became one of two doctors serving eight western Kentucky counties, an area he describes as very rural. “I must have delivered 700 babies,” Wes says, laughing. The only way to get a real day off was to leave town. Even so, the Creagers loved it. The three years became five, then 10.

“One of the great things that can happen to a physician is working where you are really needed,” Wes says. “People were very appreciative.”

When they finally got the itch to move, Tulare beckoned. The Creagers had seen all kinds of medical emergencies all over the world during their many missions, but they did not come face-to-face with AIDS until returning to their hometown.

It’s been hard on Wes. Because HOPE is not licensed to provide medical care, he cannot minister to the sick. Instead, he uses his handyman hands to do repairs. And he can listen and offer comfort.

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HOPE is quiet on a recent Sunday afternoon. One of its tenants, Ron, died a few weeks ago and his family still hasn’t given signs of life. In his case, Barbara did what she does for all her tenants: She stayed with him till the end and then made burial arrangements, which are usually paid for by Medi-Cal or by the patient’s family--if a relative shows up.

The home’s sole tenant on this recent day, then, is Mike, who asked that his last name not be used. Unlike many boarders, he has a family that cares. His mother lives in Tulare County and told him about HOPE when he returned to California after spending time in a state facility in New Jersey.

“It’s much better than I expected,” he says while watching auto races on television in the living room. “But I didn’t expect anything. There was nothing open in San Francisco, and that place [in New Jersey] was a nightmare. This place is a home.”

HOPE is a rambling three-bedroom house settled in the middle of orange groves six miles outside Porterville. With its brown carpeting and rather drab furnishings, it is not what you might call a cheerful place. It is, however, a house--not an institution--clean, comfortable, quiet and large enough to afford much-longed-for privacy. Its only staff member is Mary Driscoll, a care provider whose primary job is cooking.

Within the house’s confines, boarders attempt to live a semblance of their old lives. Mike spends hours on the Internet and goes to town whenever he’s able.

Operating on $3,000 a month, which goes to pay HOPE’s mortgage, utilities, food and Driscoll’s salary, the Creagers ask tenants to pay what they can toward room and board. A maximum of $450 a month is usually taken from their Medi-Cal or Medicare checks.

HOPE is licensed by the state to provide room and board, which means that it complies with safety, health and building codes, and provides nutritious meals and a clean environment, among other things. Because it is not licensed as a hospice, however, HOPE has its pitfalls. If a tenant falls, for example, regulations forbid anyone from picking him up, and medical attention must be provided by a hospital.

The Creagers would like to get a hospice license, but they don’t have the money to hire the required full-time medical personnel. “We can’t demand money from our clients,” Wes says flatly. “The thing is, there have been nursing homes that don’t provide good care and they did it for money. But . . . we do it out of compassion. And the law doesn’t separate compassion from money. And because of that, everyone who gets licensed is subject to the same standard, regardless of motivation.”

Besides Driscoll and an office manager at HOPE Inc. whose salary is covered by a donation from the Ryan White Fund, everyone involved volunteers his or her time. Money is raised through donations and three annual fund-raisers, including a recent tamale sale.

And while the Creagers figure out ways to get still more funds, Barbara’s boys (and soon, she says, “a girl”) keep coming in. “We’ve had people from Cuba, from Puerto Rico, Catholics, Protestants, Jewish, atheists. It doesn’t matter.”

When death is near, though, Barbara has found that most everyone wants to find peace through God. “One of our boys, Jessie, said he wanted to be baptized before he died. He was too ill to be taken to church, so we brought the minister to the house and baptized him in the bathtub.”

Not all lives, however, wind to a close quietly. At least one tenant was asked to leave when he didn’t comply with HOPE’s no-drug policy. Another decided to spend his last days in San Diego, and left HOPE penniless and aimless. The Creagers haven’t heard from him since.

The most heart-wrenching case, however, was Rene. The charismatic young man, whose father and brother moved into HOPE to be close to him, lost his mind to dementia.

“He turned against his family, became almost violent at times,” Barbara recalls. “He finally ran away. We didn’t know where he went, but Social Services in New York called us weeks later to let us know they had found him dead. So he died alone, when here he had everyone who loved him. Because his mind snapped, he left us.”

To the others, the thought of leaving HOPE is unbearable.

From his seat on the lived-in couch, his legs comfortably spread before him, Mike says: “If I had to go back to New Jersey, I think I’d jump off a cliff or something.”

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Wes and Barbara Creager

Ages: Wes is 66, Barbara 65.

Background: Barbara was born in Tulare County, Wes in Texas. They now live in Porterville, Calif.

Family: Married for 47 years, the Creagers have two children, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Passions: For Barbara, HOPE, music, singing, and the sun and the ocean. For Wes, medicine, flying, hunting and building sports cars.

Barbara on Christianity and AIDS: “I think if Christ were here today, he would be walking up and down the streets in San Francisco seeing the houses filled with so much sorrow, and he would ask us to follow in his shoes. I don’t think he would condone sin, but he would be filled with compassion and love for the person who needed it. And that’s what I had to do. I don’t say anyone else has to do it, but that’s just the way I feel.”

Wes on the evolution of HOPE: “HOPE started as kind of a dream. When I first heard about [AIDS], it mostly affected Haitians, Africans and so forth. But I never dreamed that it would really come home like it has to us.”

Barbara on the joy of singing: “I love that big ol’ amplifier. I made a cassette for AIDS awareness and I worked so hard to make it what I wanted it to be. I start with ‘Walk a Mile in My Shoes’ and end with ‘You Say I Can.’ And the boys I give that tape to, they love that song the best because it’s a person talking to God and God says you can make it. . . .”