22,000 Take Part in AIDS Walk : Health: Event sets record in attendance and contributions. Organizers expect to raise $3.2 million for research and services.

At a time when charitable donations are increasingly hard to come by, AIDS Walk Los Angeles flooded Hollywood streets with 22,000 participants Sunday and was expected to generate $3.2 million for local AIDS programs, both records for the annual event.

With a celebratory tone, rather than a somber one, participants marched, jogged and roller-bladed in memory of those who have died and in hope for those who remain. Money raised in pledges gathered by the walkers will be used to fund AIDS research and provide food and health services to people with AIDS and HIV.

“I’m tired of all these people dying of AIDS,” said Patricia Guhajardo, a career-center clerical worker whose uncle died of the disease last week. “I’m going to keep coming to this walk until they find a cure.”

The event’s organizers say attendance has grown every year since it began in 1985. And under a brilliant sun, a diverse crowd, dotted with celebrities, wound its way through the 10-kilometer route, many sponsored by local companies, schools and community groups.

Barbara Leigh walked in a T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of her 7-year-old son, Gerry, embracing her. He died of AIDS in February, she said. Two friends, one wearing a similar T-shirt and another with a shirt memorializing her own brother, walked with Leigh.

“We’re bringing our loved ones back to life,” Leigh said.

Another participant, Frank Simmons, a security guard from Los Angeles, said he was walking because a friend stricken with AIDS asked him to.

“I went out and bought a new pair of shoes to break in,” Simmons said, showing off his Reeboks. AIDS “is on everyone’s mind today. It’s getting worse instead of better.”

Mike Goyak, assistant prop master for the show “Dave’s World,” said he personally raised $2,275 in contributions. But Goyak, who was participating in his eighth AIDS walk, said drawing donations has gotten harder.

“There are so many hands out, people get tired of being asked,” he said.

Craig Miller, who created the event for AIDS Project Los Angeles, agreed that despite the success of the walk, “We see AIDS fund-raising events around the country by and large holding even or losing ground.”

That hasn’t stopped Cynthia Parks, an assistant to DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, from netting $100,000 in donations during her decade participating in the walk. Parks was presented with an award during the event’s opening ceremonies, but was too choked up to say anything to the crowd beyond: “Raise more money next year.”

Sunday’s walk precedes by two weeks the 10th anniversary of the death of actor Rock Hudson, whose passing thrust AIDS into the national spotlight. Now California’s largest AIDS fund-raiser, the walk has been the genesis for similar annual events in San Francisco, New York and other cities.

The opening ceremonies, held on the Paramount Pictures lot, drew a crowd including actresses Sandra Bullock, Teri Hatcher and Jamie Lee Curtis, Mayor Richard Riordan and Police Chief Willie L. Williams.

“I woke up this morning and I was embarrassed to be here, and I felt hopeless,” Curtis told the crowd. “I was embarrassed because it took the death of my best friend, Richard Frank, three weeks ago, who died of complications from AIDS, to get me here, and I don’t know why. . . . I’ve sent in my token donations, and I’ve cried along with other people who have lost friends and family. But I’ve never been here. So what do I have to do? I have to walk the walk. I have to talk the talk.”