By Greg Hernandez As Nicole Thibeau walked into a meeting with hundreds of Los Angeles LGBT Center employees during Pride month in 2018, she was asked at the door which Pride flag she wanted to carry into the Center’s Renberg Theatre. “I said, ‘Oh, I want the pansexual flag,’” the Center’s director of Pharmacy Services recalls answering. It was a response that surprised even Thibeau herself. “I felt really emotional about it and I could not shake that feeling,” she shares. “I just kept coming back to it in the intervening months and I finally had to be like, ‘There’s…
Author: Greg Hernandez
By Greg Hernandez AIDS/LifeCycle participant Amit Guru used the occasion of World AIDS Day on December 1 to share how he felt when he tested positive for the HIV virus in 2011. He was just 24 at the time and felt like he “would literally just be done with living in the world.” “I wasn’t educated on what it meant to be HIV positive and what it was like to live with HIV at the time,” Guru (pictured, above) said during the AIDS/LifeCycle World AIDS Day Broadcast. “I didn’t know what kind of resources there were, what kind of medications…
By Greg Hernandez The Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Derald Hunter used the words “super dope” to sum up his feelings about being recognized by the City of West Hollywood on World AIDS Day for his HIV outreach work. “It’s a privilege to be able to do the work we do and to be able to say we are dedicating our lives to helping in a way that serves more than just us as individuals,” Hunter said while accepting the 21st annual Paul Andrew Starke Warrior Award during a virtual ceremony on December 1. Hunter is a Health Services program coordinator…
By Greg Hernandez Culinary Arts Executive Chef Instructor Leslie Riley had important cooking tips to impart on a group of Los Angeles LGBT Center seniors during a recent demonstration on how to make Eggs Benedict. But the most important one came when she briefly touched a hot pan. “Don’t do that!” she warned. “I have like no fingerprints left!” Riley gave the first of what are expected to be monthly cooking demonstrations for residents of the new Ariadne Getty Foundation Senior Housing complex. The lessons are an opportunity to tell the residents about the Center’s 300-hour Culinary Arts program which…
Camille Araullo was a beloved member of the Los Angeles LGBT Center staff who spent 22 years managing and growing the army of volunteers who support the Center’s programs, services, and events. Araullo’s last day at the Center was January 3, 2020, when she left to pursue ministry work. Last March, Metropolitan Community Churches announced she had been hired as one of two new Diversity, Inclusion, and Laity Development Coordinators for MCC worldwide. Sadly, Araullo died during the Thanksgiving weekend after a courageous battle with cancer. In an email to staff, Center CEO Lorri L. Jean paid tribute to Araullo’s…
By Greg Hernandez What do 400 pounds of roasted turkey, 300 pounds of stuffing, 265 pounds of mashed potatoes, 120 pounds each of green beans and carrots, 22 gallons of cranberry sauce, and 15 gallons of gravy make? Thanksgiving meals for nearly 900 people! In the largest undertaking so far for the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Culinary Arts program, the meals were prepared in recent days in the commercial teaching kitchen that is part of the Center’s Anita May Rosenstein Campus. Hundreds were packaged by an assembly line of volunteers inside the Campus’s Pride Hall early Tuesday morning and then…
Albert Ontiveros was a child during the early years of the AIDS pandemic, but he knows his history and why World AIDS Day is so important. “A lot of us younger humans, we weren’t there for the beginning and for the worst parts of it, but we’re trying to be here for the end,” said Ontiveros, who will be participating in the AIDS/LifeCycle World AIDS Day Broadcast on December 1 as a member of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Founded in 1988, World AIDS Day was the first-ever global health day. It is an occasion to remember and reflect on those…
Before coming to work at the Center, I was working as a pharmacist at a for-profit pharmacy chain and thought I was content. Then in May 2017, my girlfriend and I attended the Center’s An Evening With Women fundraiser and I was very moved by Lorri L. Jean’s speech that night and by the event itself. I began keeping an eye out for any openings for a pharmacist job at the Center. I work in our main pharmacy checking prescriptions, at our Center WeHo medication dispensary, and now in our new medication dispensary at Center South’s primary care clinic. It’s…
By Greg Hernandez There were plenty of tears during Thursday’s Trans* Day of Remembrance and Celebration of Life event held during a year when a record 53 known transgender and gender non-conforming people have been murdered. Several people took turns at a microphone in the middle of the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Bayard Rustin Courtyard to read the names of the dead during an emotional candlelight vigil. A white rose was placed inside a basket in honor of each person. “I always cry when the names are read — every single year,” attendee Maddie Simpson said after the reading. “Being…
Being on a team of 300 AIDS/LifeCycle roadies, our only purpose is to make other peoples’ experience better. Living a week of being of service and volunteering collectively with that many people changes you in ways you could never imagine. The joy and caring experienced in the ride’s “love bubble” carries me throughout the entire year. The ride brings so many different communities together and breaks down barriers in a way that ripples out into the real world and changes everything for the better. When I came out in the 1980s, that kind of support just wasn’t possible. Working in food…