All
About Karraker
For 17 years, Cynthia Karraker has
been a strong voice for those living with AIDS
by Joshua Tehee, Imagine
Fresno (a special section of The
Fresno Bee)
(originally published March, 2007)
Click here to read this article from the March issue of Imagine
Fresno in its entirety
After
20 years, Cynthia Karraker is still devoted to helping families
affected by HIV/AIDS
by
Doug Hoagland, The
Fresno Bee
(originally published Tuesday, August 9, 2005)
Reprinted with permission
Committed
to caring
When
her husband died of AIDS, Cynthia Karraker found a cause,
and some skeptics. They wondered whether she had staying power
or would wilt as time passed. Now 20 years later, the indomitable
Karraker says, "I knew I was committed. And I am."
On
Sunday, Karraker stood under the towering pines of a church
campground in Yosemite National Park and welcomed two bus
loads of people with HIV/AIDS and their family members to
a four-day camp.
The
crowd lugged suitcases and pillows, and one of them, a blond
boy of 8 who had been to camp before, told Karraker with a
lopsided grin, "I was missing you." She said she
missed him, too.
A
decade ago, Karraker started the free camp because she believed
that patients with HIV or AIDS needed time away from home
to have fun.
She
had lived the disease with her husband, Randy, a well-known
Christian musician.
Randy
Karraker was one of the first AIDS patients in the Valley,
and his widow became one of the first AIDS activists in the
region.
"She
has brought the human face of AIDS to the community,"
says hospice founder Nancy Hinds.
Randy
Karraker died in 1985. In 1990, Cynthia Karraker started All
About Care, a nonprofit organization to help women and children
infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. Hinds is on the board of
directors. In 1996, Karraker began the summer camp known as
Camp Care .
The
Fresno woman is a one-person social service agency.
At
Fresno 's University Medical Center , where low-income people
with HIV and AIDS go for treatment, she plays an important
support role, says nurse manager Sue Flammang: "She is
the only person I can go to at the drop of a hat."
Dr.
Tegest Hailu, a family practice physician and HIV specialist
at UMC, says Karraker has "a huge heart. She is always
a phone call away, and she always comes through. I don't know
how she does it."
Karraker
has helped people pay electric bills, cover the rent and get
groceries at Thanksgiving. A woman who needed help telling
her children she was HIV positive found the words from Karraker.
And she once paid for piano lessons for a child in a cash-strapped
household.
Karraker
also has tried to reconcile estranged family members before
one of them died from AIDS. Since the early 1980s, the disease
has killed more than 1,000 people in Fresno , Kings, Madera
and Tulare counties. Advances in medicine now keep many people
with HIV from developing AIDS; HIV is the virus that causes
AIDS. The new drugs, however, aren't quick fixes, Karraker
says, and they don't change attitudes that stigmatize patients.
"We
still have family members who make them eat off plastic or
paper plates, and they can't use the restroom at home,"
says UMC's Flammang. "It's sad that there is still so
much ignorance and fear."
'Crazy
about each other'
Karraker
experienced some of it. It was part of being with her husband.
" Rand ," she called him and still does as she smiles
broadly and says: "We were crazy about each other. I
still am wild for him."
Randy
and Cynthia Karraker married in 1979, and he told her about
his previous homosexual experiences. She accepted her husband's
past and doesn't believe it's worth talking about today.
Also,
in 1979 Cynthia Karraker didn't know she was taking any health
risk in marrying; the public hadn't heard of HIV or AIDS yet.
She is not HIV-positive.
Karraker
is critical today of men who hide from their female partners
what her husband told her. The much-reported practice is known
as being on the "down low." It involves bisexual
and gay men having sex with other men and putting their female
partners at risk for HIV.
"You
might think you're doing it for the hell of it, the experience
of it, the thrill of it," Karraker says. "But the
ripple effect doesn't end with the man doing what he damn
well pleases."
A
diagnosis changes everything for a family.
Randy
Karraker's diagnosis came in the spring of 1984, and he was
treated in both San Francisco and Fresno . He spent the last
five months of his life at then-Fresno Community Hospital,
where employees were so afraid they would open the door and
push in his food tray on the floor.
"They
knew what disease was in that room," Karraker says.
Randy
Karraker died in his wife's arms in May 1985, two weeks before
their sixth wedding anniversary.
He
was 32.
Cynthia
Karraker says she sometimes senses her husband's presence
and finds strength in that: "I really feel quite blessed.
I have been in some uncomfortable situations in the last 20
years, but I have never been afraid. Never."
Soon
after Randy Karraker died, Cynthia Karraker started informally
helping AIDS patients and their families. Names came to her
from Marilyn Mitchell, then a communicable disease specialist
for Fresno County who needed help with a growing public health
issue.
'A
strong personality'
The
two women became friends, candor a common bond. "Cynthia
has a very strong personality, and she is difficult to deal
with if you get in the way of something she thinks is right,"
Mitchell says. "But I think that's a positive thing.
There are very few people who will stand by their convictions
at a large risk to themselves.
"She
wants individuals to be treated humanely."
Karraker
also wanted people to know what her husband went through.
So 18 months after he died, she broke a silence that had surrounded
his death. Karraker spoke out in a story in The Bee with words
that were both tough and tender. She talked of their love,
and how Randy Karraker's parents and siblings rallied around
him and how hundreds of others sent cards and letters.
Randy's
father was Fresno pastor Bufe Karraker, who died in 2001.
But
she also spoke of unnamed ministers in Fresno who knew the
Karraker family and did nothing. She was angry at that.
Karraker
praised Jews and entertainers for lending their names to the
early fight against AIDS, and added: "Christians are
sitting on their butts, trying to figure out what category
of sin this fits into."
Today,
Cynthia Karraker says, some churches aren't judgmental about
HIV and AIDS, "but it's case by case, church by church,
pastor by pastor" and she still sees families ripped
apart.
"When
I have to sit at somebody's bed because I promised them they
would not die by themselves, and Mom and Dad won't go because
they are so full of that religious right hoo-ha, I think:
'Put the damn stuff down and hug your child,' " says
Karraker, who is Catholic.
She
and her husband had no children.
When
she started All About Care, she left a full-time job as a
retail store coordinator, and today she is the only employee
of the nonprofit, though she relies on a corps of volunteers.
Karraker
raises money from private donors, collecting $118,000 in 2003,
the latest year for which public records are available. She
raised $139,000 in 2002 and $133,000 in 2001. In each of the
three years, she took a salary of $36,000, according to the
public records.
Over
the years, community organizations have recognized Karraker
for her work, which includes running support groups for women.
More
women now have AIDS than 20 years ago, says the federal Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention. But the rate of new diagnoses
recently decreased slightly, based on information from 32
states, according to the CDC.
'She
just stayed with me'
Fay
is one of the women helped by Karraker. She wouldn't give
her last name, but she is at Camp Care this week and says
she has "a full blown" case of AIDS.
A
Fresno woman with a warm smile, Fay says she was angry and
frightened after being diagnosed, and that for several years
she directed those emotions at Karraker.
Fay
says she spread rumors and stirred discontent in Karraker's
support group: "But she just stayed with me. Her patience
and her love are beyond words."
Ginger
Pippin and her adult daughter, Terresa, are two other women
helped by Karraker. Terresa Pippin, 36, is partially paralyzed
and can barely speak because of two AIDS-related strokes.
"At
first, we didn't want anyone to know my daughter had AIDS,"
says Ginger Pippin, a former Fresno resident. "We knew
Cynthia wouldn't blab it all over." Pippin says she initially
believed AIDS is "a dirty thing."
Gradually,
her thinking changed. "I don't know how, but I know Cynthia
helped me realize that I love my kids no matter what they
do," Pippin says.
Terresa
Pippin came to camp with her son and her older sisters.
'No
stigma here'
The
campers are mothers, fathers, children and siblings. They
are white, Hispanic and black.
Many
have come before.
Fay
says she returned for a sixth summer because it's a place
where her disease isn't an issue.
Dr.
Hailu, one of 60 camp volunteers, says people get a chance
to see life beyond HIV and AIDS at the camp: "There is
no stigma here."
Karraker
laughs at the irony of her starting a camp. She hates dirt,
bugs and the nosey bear that once wandered up to her cabin.
"I'm
100% princess," she admits, smiling.
But
Karraker gets serious as she explains something about her
work.
"This
isn't the easiest job in the world, but it's fulfilling to
my spirit," she says.
"With
just a little bit of effort, you can make such a difference
in someone's life. Isn't that swell?"
Living
Lessons
Women to be honored with the annual Fresno award turn life
experiences into tools to help others.
The
Fresno Bee
(originally published Sunday, October 14, 2001)
Reprinted with permission
Karraker
and her husband, Randall "Randy" Dean Karraker, decided
together that they would try to make life easier for AIDS patients
and their families.
