Lost to AIDS but Unforgotten by 15,000

If you ask, many of the participants in AIDS Walk Orange County 2000 will tell you that their own names don’t really matter. The important names on a steamy June Sunday at UC Irvine are the ones in their hearts, on the signs they carry and the T-shirts they wear:

Charles Carpenter. David Dunn. Minh Tam and Michael Jay Bebek. All of them lost to AIDS-related illnesses.

In mourning and in celebration of their lives, their families and friends joined the estimated 15,000 people strolling, running and roller-blading in the 14th annual event.

Lacey Carpenter, 18, lost her father seven years ago. At the time, the Yorba Linda resident really didn’t comprehend acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or death. She just knew that her 39-year-old father was slipping away and most of her friends didn’t understand.

Now she knows all those things, and more. So Carpenter and several friends volunteered for the event and served as its cheerleaders, chanting and yelling for scores of participants.

“This means a lot to me,” the freckled teen said. “It’s always nice to see all the people who come here. . . . Everyone here has something in common. Everyone here has the same reason. The same goals.”

The so-far elusive goal is ending AIDS--finding a cure or stopping transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus, which leads to the disease. The more tangible goal was raising money for the half-dozen Orange County organizations that fight to prevent AIDS and help those living with it and HIV. Health officials have tallied 5,295 AIDS cases in Orange County.

Ironically, the success of medicines that prolong the lives of many who are HIV-positive have also hampered AIDS fund-raising efforts in some quarters, because the urgency of the disease seems reduced. But in Orange County, AIDS Walk fund-raising set a record this year, raising about $800,000, compared with last year’s $665,000, event organizers said.

The 5K and 10K walk, snaking around the UCI campus, brought people from across Southern California. Organizations from Disney to the Westminster Police Department fielded walkers. There were people of all ages and races, many carrying signs, holding balloons or pushing strollers. Many came to show their support, others to pay their respects.

For Stanton resident Bobbie Dunn, participating in the walk is a solemn promise to David Dunn, who died in 1994 at age 31. She keeps her son’s ashes in a box on top of the television set and talks to him from time to time. On Sunday morning, she patted the box and told David where she was going.

“When he was taking his last breath, I told him I would walk this walk as long as God gave me the willpower.”

Irvine resident Loc Tieu, his family and their dog were walking for a second year. His brother, physician Minh Tam, died last year at age 30. “He was really young,” Tieu said. “That’s why we’re here.”

A few blocks away a group was wearing matching T-shirts, each emblazoned with a photo of a mustachioed Michael Jay Bebek, who died in 1998. His mother, sister and friends talked about the 36-year-old’s restaurant, his smarts, the way he could make you laugh when you wanted to cry and how, even in the last months of his life, he helped ailing Spanish speakers navigate a confusing health care system.

They also remembered how Bebek researched all the medicines and treatments before using them--and somehow managed to live 17 years after he was infected.

“He was a great listener and a great teacher, a great role model,” said sister Carol Bebek of Buena Park. “He was very optimistic, in spite of what he had to go through.”

Near the finish line, a dozen sign-carrying protesters exhorted walkers that finding Jesus was the ultimate solution to AIDS. “You want a cure?” shouted one man, who would not give his name. “Repentance is the cure to all ills.”

For the most part, the walkers ignored them. A few tried debating, and one woman blew kisses at the group.