AIDS and Comfort

He crisscrosses Los Angeles each day with a cell phone in hand, ministering to some 30 men with calls, prayers and company.

David Hibbs, a lay minister, receives 10 to 15 calls a day from men throughout the Los Angeles area who are HIV-positive or have AIDS and need a friend or need to hear that everything will be OK.

“I go wherever I get a call,” Hibbs said.

On the best days, the 53-year-old Toluca Lake resident might find himself counseling a client on a park bench or at the beach or sharing a laugh at a movie. On the worst days, he might need to comfort a client during a doctor’s appointment.

“I need to be there in case there’s bad news,” he said.

Whatever the event or location, the conversation is what counts.

“Usually, we start out talking about T-cells or side effects from HIV medication,” he said. “But after that, my clients usually want to talk about their past and what they’ve done--things they want to get off their chest.”

In the past, a client named Billy often called from jail. HIV-positive since 1983, the 37-year-old drug offender told Hibbs he could not muster the courage to tell his two teenage children about his illness.

“He still feels so stigmatized,” Hibbs said, adding that Billy sought his counseling about five years ago. “For the first time in his life, he’s probably doing better than he’s ever done.”

Carrying a message of hope and redemption is nothing new for Hibbs. In 1992, he started skipping lunch at his job in North Hollywood, where he worked as a television audience coordinator, to visit a man in a nearby hospital who was dying of AIDS.

“The peace of talking to this man was overpowering,” Hibbs said. “I knew then this was my calling.”

It was no surprise to friends when Hibbs gave up a steady paycheck last year to start his own outreach program for AIDS and HIV patients, called Pacific AIDS Ministry. Clients are referred by word of mouth and by area churches.

The small organization operated last year on a $7,000 budget from donations. Although a board helps him raise funds, he is the only minister on call.

He hopes to expand his services to bring a female minister on board to help meet the needs of women with AIDS.

Hibbs said it is especially important to help people with AIDS now because its significance seems to have worn off with the public in recent years.

Many of Hibbs’ clients no longer fear death, he said, but they struggle with learning how to live with the illness. Drug treatments routinely extend the lives of HIV-positive patients, often for years.

One of Hibbs’ clients, a man named Tony, has been HIV-positive for 12 years. During that time, the 37-year-old Hollywood resident has grappled with denial and anger and now is working on acceptance.

Each day, he said, he is confronted with people’s ignorance about AIDS and the discrimination and prejudice that he senses from strangers.

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But he struggles most with guilt and loneliness. He once wanted to be a singer, but he gave it up a long time ago because touring wore him out. Working odd jobs was not much easier. His fragile body tires easily. Now unable to work, depression sometimes takes over.

“There’s something about living with this illness,” said the soft-spoken man sitting on a quilted bedspread in his one-bedroom apartment. “Maybe it’s a fear of rejection.”

He said he heard about Hibbs four years ago when the lay minister was volunteering for AIDS Project L.A. The two have met weekly since then. Between visits, Hibbs checks in by telephone.

“David has given me reassurance--that I can relax, be myself and cry,” Tony said.

Hibbs said he gets back what he gives many times over.

“There is something very peaceful about doing this,” he said. “From this, I get inner peace.”

For more information about the Pacific AIDS Ministry, call (818) 762-1996.

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