Taking Steps to Help AIDS Victims : Charity: Nearly 500 people turn out for Walk for Life ‘95, which raises more than $60,000 for groups helping those with the disease and HIV.

Compared to last year, Walk for Life ’95 was a leisurely stroll for Hilda Muller.

*

A year ago, the Fillmore resident was the first to finish the fund-raising event benefiting Ventura County’s AIDS support groups, hustling to get back to the hospital where her son, Ken Garcia, was dying of AIDS complications.

He died eight days later, at the age of 30, knowing that his mother had walked the 6.2-mile course for both of them.

“He was a very likable kid, a good kid,” said Muller, in the middle of a sea of walkers Saturday morning that stretched along the bike path fronting San Buenaventura State Beach.

Within that moving mass, Muller was surrounded by 18 friends and family members wearing white T-shirts that read “In Memory of Ken Garcia.”

“Last year I was here by myself,” added Muller, wearing a tiny black-and-white photo of her son pinned to her T-shirt. “This year, I told a couple of people, and they told other people. That’s the way it should work. It’s such a good event and it’s for a good cause.”

Nearly 500 people took part Saturday in the fourth annual Walk for Life, raising a little more than $60,000, the most successful pledge walk in the event’s history.

The money benefits Christopher House, a hospice for people living with acquired immune deficiency syndrome and the virus that causes the disease, and AIDS Care, a nonprofit group that provides support services for people with the virus.

*

In addition to being the biggest fund-raiser for the two groups, organizers say the walk has become an annual demonstration of community support for people with AIDS and HIV.

“I think it really reflects the breadth of commitment in the community to fighting AIDS and to supporting those who are living with the disease,” said Doug Green, executive director of AIDS Care. “It’s just going to keep getting bigger and better.”

Despite the drizzle near the beach Saturday morning, walkers showed up in shorts and T-shirts, pledge sheets in hand.

As the event got under way, they paraded around a parking lot and onto the bike path that stretches along the beach and then cuts north along the Ventura River.

Some participants walked their dogs. Mothers and fathers pushed their kids in strollers. One boy pushed an older man in a wheelchair.

Some people carried photos of loved ones who had succumbed to the disease. A group of high school students walked the 10-kilometer course leading the kind of cheerleading chants one might hear at a football game.

*

More than two dozen students from St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo sang and prayed the whole way. St. John’s was the largest team fund-raiser this year, taking in $4,100 in pledges.

“We believe in life,” said Ramon Uribe, a 17-year-old freshman who hopes to be a priest. “This is a way to give a little bit of our life for those who don’t have it any more.”

Thousand Oaks-based biotechnology firm Amgen was the second-largest money raiser, generating $3,491 in pledges.

Linda Porter, a clinical research associate with Amgen’s AIDS Team, was one of about 30 walkers from the company who turned out for the event. She said she believes her colleagues are motivated to participate because of personal experience with the AIDS epidemic and because of the pharmaceutical company’s role in medical research.

“I have family members who have been affected and I have dear, dear friends who have been affected,” said Porter, about four miles into the walk. “I do it in their memory. It’s a way of honoring them.”

*

Other than raising money, there is little competition involved. The event is not a footrace, so there is no pressure to finish first.

Some walkers, such as Ventura’s Doug Halter, are pleased to be walking at all.

Halter, 35, tested positive for HIV in 1987. Last year, he was so ill he couldn’t participate in the event.

“Here it is a year later and I’m in much better health than I was last year,” said Halter, one of about 1,000 people nationwide taking an experimental drug that is believed to interrupt the life cycle of the virus that causes AIDS. “It’s a neat thing to see that the message is getting out. There are a lot of reasons to be hopeful.”

Hilda Muller feels the same way. Stuck somewhere in the middle of the pack Saturday, she was enjoying the leisurely pace. She still cries when she talks about her son, but she was in no hurry to finish the walk this year.

“My son’s not waiting for me this time,” she said. “He may be looking down at me, but he’s not waiting.”