Jeffrey Applewhite recognized the men on the street corner as local gang members active in the drug trade. He approached them anyway, albeit with some hesitation.
Before the South Side Help Center outreach worker reached the men, they quietly disappeared into a decrepit building at the corner of 79th Street and Marquette Avenue.
Still, Applewhite walked toward the corner, determined to pass out some condoms and speak with at least one of the young men about AIDS and HIV prevention. Then, just before he crossed the street, a sixth sense seemed to take over, and he stopped.
“It’s too hot,” Applewhite said.
Sometimes it’s just too dangerous, even for Applewhite and the other outreach workers who routinely target young men and women from some of Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhoods.
But even if it’s “too hot” one day, it might not be the next, and the workers will be back on the streets providing AIDS and HIV education to people who would never seek out the information themselves.
“Those are the people we’re trying to reach because they won’t come to us,” said Applewhite, pointing to the men as they reappeared on the street corner. “They’re not going to take the time out to go to the center, get a checkup. So we actually have to take the condoms to them.”
Darnell Woods, 30, was walking to his job at a nearby strip mall when he was attracted by the rainbow-colored van. He spoke briefly with an outreach worker, stopping just long enough to pick up some condoms.
“[AIDS] is out here, and people don’t even know it,” Woods said. “It’s not so much they don’t know it, it’s that they ignore it.”
Condoms aren’t all the workers bring in the van, which is outfitted with a high-tech audio system blaring rap music designed to attract people, if only for a few precious seconds. The workers bring with them a cardboard display with images showing the effects of gonorrhea, syphilis, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
“I may leave an image with you in that three minutes that when something occurs, you may revert back to that and say, ‘Man, I remember,’ ” program director Harold Cherry said. “And that may prompt you to go to the doctor and get tested.”
