Day of remembrance especially poignant for man living 34 years with HIV

The news 34 years ago devastated Ric Uggen so much that he started driving from Laguna Beach to Palos Verdes intending to end his life.

Uggen learned he was HIV positive and said he planned driving off a cliff when he got to his destination. Then he thought of his family.

“Halfway up I thought of my parents,” Uggen said Tuesday following a candlelight vigil at Main Beach to honor people who have died of AIDS. “They taught me that life was precious and I was going to see that through. I turned the car around. I could not do that to my mother.”

Uggen, 64, joined more than 20 others who held candles while surrounding an artificial tree set atop a table.

The vigil, organized by Laguna Beach’s HIV Advisory Committee with help from groups such as the AIDS Services Foundation Orange County, coincided with World AIDS Day, a time of remembrance for victims of HIV that the World Health Organization says has claimed more than 34 million lives. AIDS, which weakens a person’s immune system, is the advanced stage of HIV.

Each person took turns announcing the name of a loved one who died of the disease. To protect confidentiality, attendees gave first names with a last initial. They wrote the names on paper hearts and hung the hearts on the tree’s branches.

Uggen, who lived in Laguna for a time and has visited schools to educate students on preventative steps such as practicing safe sex, watched friends die from the disease through the years.

While advances in antiretroviral drugs have helped people with HIV live longer, Uggen cautioned the public, particularly 16-to-24-year-olds, from becoming complacent, carrying an attitude of “it’s never going to happen to me.”

“Young people have no idea what the disease looks like,” Uggen said. “You can live productive lives, but the drugs are toxic and expensive.” Treatment drugs can carry more serious side effects such as diabetes, liver failure and decreases in bone density.

“It’s important we educate to prevent the transmission, by using your brain before using genitals.”

Uggen, who contracted the virus so early in the epidemic they diagnosed him with pneumonia, credits a positive attitude, healthy diet and abstinence from alcohol and recreational drugs as factors in helping him manage the disease.

“It’s not my time to go,” he said. “God’s got more work for me to do.”

Basketball star Magic Johnson’s announcement in 1991 that he was HIV positive thrust the disease into the public spotlight, but AIDS had already begun devastating communities with prominent gay populations such as Laguna in the 1980s.

People didn’t know how to react, said the Rev. B.J. Beu of Neighborhood Congregational Church in Laguna Beach. Beu officiated Tuesday’s vigil.

“Churches acted badly,” Beu said. “They were afraid of gay people and often preached against people, as if AIDS was a form of God’s punishment.”

Beu had a friend in his 30s who died of AIDS 25 years ago.

“It’s incumbent for people of faith to right that wrong,” Beu said. “We need to share that God’s love is for everybody.”

More than 1.2 million people in the United States are living with HIV, and almost 1 in 8 are unaware of their infection, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Men who have sex with men are most seriously affected by HIV, though the disease can also be transmitted through contaminated needles and blood transfusions.