Students raise AIDS funds and awareness

NEWPORT BEACH — Jean Vogel stood on Newport Harbor High School’s quad on Friday during lunch and thoughtfully regarded a quilt spread out on the pavement. At the bottom were a series of hearts listing the names of local people who had died of AIDS. At the top was a picture of her son, Craig Johnson, who lost his life to the disease.

Vogel is a member of the AIDS Family and Friends support group headquartered in Garden Grove. On Friday, her group lent the quilt to Newport Harbor High’s Young Democrats club, which kicked off a campaign this week to combat AIDS around the world. As onlookers gathered around the quilt, club members sold Mexican food at a neighboring table to raise funds for the World Vision charity.

The word AIDS — an acronym for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome — has been a household term for two decades, but Vogel said she doubted that many students knew how many people the disease affected.

“It’s very sad that these kids don’t know,” she said. “We’ve had old ladies die; we’ve had young girls die.”

During lunch on Friday, representatives from the Volunteer Center of Orange County and the AIDS Education Global Information System handed out materials on the quad. Rebecca Brown and Olivia Dahan, the co-presidents of the Young Democrats, said they hoped to make the AIDS drive into an annual event. Earlier this week, the club held a fundraising dinner at Ruby’s and sold Jamba Juice on campus.

“We felt like doing something that would make an impact on our community,” said Olivia, 16, a junior. “People don’t talk about AIDS very often, so we thought that would be a good thing to bring up.”