AIDS
Veronica's story

What risks are you taking with your body? Veronica had dreams of going to Hollywood to be a hairdresser for the stars. Like many teenagers, she had boyfriends, went to the prom, and babysat the kids in her neighborhood. Just as she was about to follow her dreams, she found out that her boyfriend had HIV. She was tested, and learned that she had the virus, too.

“AIDS is everybody's virus,” she says. “It don't just pick African American, Asians, Hispanics, Anglos, Italians, Indians, anybody. As long as we engage in those risky behaviors we're setting ourselves up.”

Veronica moved back to Philadelphia. She kept the news about her HIV to herself. She was so stressed that she sought relief in drugs.

“You know, to cope with it,” she says. “To try cope. I couldn't tell my mother, or my father, or my brother. They didn't understand. They thought the same way I did, that it was a gay white male thing, and that no black woman should get it, you know.”

After years of addiction, Veronica went into recovery. She began urging others to protect themselves from disease. She warned them about the dangers of drugs.

“You know,” she says, “it could be the ugliest person in the world, someone we think we wouldn't think twice about if we were sober, but we'd go to bed with when we were high or intoxicated."

“Hey, this is your body,” she says. “You don't have to lay down with him if you don't want to. And if he doesn't want to use a condom, tell him to go somewhere else. Young people continuing to do risky behaviors, it tears me up, because I know I was like that. No one could tell me anything. I thought I knew everything.”

Veronica continued to feel healthy. She got married. She and her husband, Dennis, adopted a baby boy born to a drug addict. No one else would take him in. The baby was five years old when Veronica died from complications of HIV.

Dennis and Veronica's family continue to give the baby a loving home. They all miss and continue to love Veronica.