Sequels of ’95 : They...

Amid reports that increasing numbers of HIV cases are heterosexually transmitted, we visited some of the people who have been unsuspectingly infected by spouses, lovers or casual dates (“The Changing Face of AIDS,” June 16).

In the months since, the health of the people we interviewed has not improved, but their courage and endurance seems to have multiplied.

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Lynn Chamberlain, 26, of Los Angeles, was found to be HIV-positive in 1991, at 21. She was infected by a man she met on summer break from Tuskegee University, where she was a pre-law senior. He neglected to tell her that he was bisexual and had been HIV-positive for years.

Chamberlain spent the next three years at her mom’s home, “waiting to die.” Finally, she joined a support group and began speaking publicly.

Since her story appeared, she has joined the board of directors of AIDS Project Los Angeles and has been hired as a speaker for such clients as the National Football League, which sends her to training camps.

“The first day I just hang out. The players don’t know me or why I’m there. They start joking and flirting. The next day, I give them an AIDS 101 class and tell them I’m HIV-positive. They really freak out because I look so healthy and they could so easily have gotten involved. It shows them you can’t just look at someone and tell whether or not they’re HIV-positive.”

She has spoken to the New York Jets, the Dallas Cowboys, the Chicago Bears and the New Orleans Saints. Next year, she intends to “decide what I want to do with the rest of my life, and maybe complete some of the goals I had before my diagnosis.”

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Stephanie Amande, 28, of Canyon Country, was divorced and had two small children when she set out to find a “solid relationship” with a man who would be a good father to her kids. She met “a wonderful person,” became engaged after a few months, and then learned that her husband-to-be had full-blown AIDS. She also discovered that she was pregnant and that he had transmitted the virus to her. Their baby was born healthy; her fiance died.

Amande is determined to give her children, now 7, 5 and 20 months, “as good a life as I can--for as long as I can.”

Since she spoke to The Times she has become weaker, more tired, more frequently ill. “I try not to worry. What good would that do?”

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After learning that he was HIV-positive through a routine exam at work, Steve Hunio, 37, of Woodland Hills, became active in an AIDS educational group, fell in love and married one of the group’s founders. Two months later, his wife died of AIDS, which she’d contracted from her previous husband, a college professor.

Reached at his parents’ home, where he now lives, Hunio said he has been fighting a brain tumor for the last month. “I’ve had radiation and the doctors are going to see what else they can do. I’ve been pretty idle for a while, but when I recuperate that will change.”

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Ann Copeland, 47, of Hermosa Beach, was 39 and had dated her boyfriend Patrick for eight years when she got cold feet about their upcoming marriage. They broke up. She took a night course at Santa Monica City College and briefly dated a man she met in class--”a solid businessman type, divorced and with a small child.” Copeland quickly realized that it was Patrick she loved, so she went back to him and they were married. But the businessman, who since has died of AIDS, had transmitted the virus to Copeland.

In the early stages of her illness, she co-founded Women at Risk, a support group for HIV-positive women. But she has had some setbacks.

“Before Thanksgiving I had heart failure and I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is it.’ I haven’t had any T-cells for so long, and I take so much medicine, which makes me sick. Patrick is the reason I’m still alive. He does my infusions, all my care, goes to doctors with me. I’ve got the best [husband] there is. I’m so lucky.”

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Elizabeth Mercado, 29, of San Gabriel, met Robert in 1987 and married him in 1990. “Neither of us had sex with anyone else from the day we met.” They believe Robert was infected before he met Elizabeth. But his condition was not diagnosed until 1993, when the couple had two babies and he started feeling ill. Elizabeth, who felt fine, also tested HIV-positive. The children, now 7 and 3, are healthy.

But this is a sad holiday season for them all. Elizabeth is selecting a coffin. “Doctors say Robert is at death’s door. He is in and out of hospitals, with a catheter in his heart, intravenous tubes, visiting nurses when he’s home. I am begging him to hang on until his 31st birthday in January, and he wants to. But it’s so hard. We know it’s his last Christmas.”

Elizabeth has not been feeling well herself but has no time to dwell on that. She spends “every minute possible” at her husband’s side.

The Mercados have selected a family who will become guardians of their children after Robert dies and Elizabeth becomes too ill to care for them.

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Beverly Mosley, 48, of Los Angeles, was about to marry a man she’d loved for two years when he became ill in 1992. Doctors diagnosed AIDS, and Mosley, a divorced grandmother, tested HIV-positive. She nursed her fiance until he died, still unsure how he’d been infected.

Mosley felt strong when we first spoke with her and feels even stronger now, she says. Her job as a treatment advocate at Being Alive “keeps me moving, meeting people and learning about the new therapies and clinical trials. I inform infected people what’s out there and what the newest thinking is.”

After three years on various drugs, she has stopped all medication. “For me, it’s quality of life that counts. The [medicines] kept my T cells up, but the side effects weren’t worth it. . . . I plan to be here a long time, until the cure comes. I’ve made up my mind.”

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Jason Jasnos of Venice found out that he was HIV-positive in 1989, at age 19. He believes it was caused by a man who molested him when he was 13. The man later died of AIDS.

In the six years since Jasnos’ condition was diagnosed, he said his attitude about the illness had “evolved.” He’d started out thinking he “could beat this thing,” but wound up “accepting the reality that I may get sick.” Jasnos declined to comment for this story.