Word: brinker
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Ruth Brinker is grandmother incarnate, a balm of memories and sympathies. As she sits at the edge of his messy bed, the young blond man pries the lid off his dinner. An Italian omelet, roast potatoes, broccoli. The cramped hotel room actually smells of home. "Ruth," he says, "I love...
...that very moment, several dozen volunteers are playing out the same scene in several hundred rooms and apartments all across San Francisco, feeding and cheering men and women with AIDS. These volunteers are the soldiers of Project Open Hand, which Brinker, 66, started in 1985. She and her workers now provide 1,100 meals...
...Brinker did not set out to become a savior. In 1984 a young architect she knew fell ill. "I'd never had any experience with AIDS," she recalls. "I was appalled at how quickly he became too sick to take care of himself." She and other friends formed a rotating caretaker group. But, occasionally, one would forget about his or her shift, and the dying architect went hungry until the next shift arrived. "I realized then," Brinker recalls, "that there were people throughout the city who didn't have my friend's support...
Today the client list grows by almost 100 people every month. In 1986 Open Hand's budget was $70,000. By the end of that year, Brinker realized her next budget would have to be a quarter of a million dollars. "I almost had a heart attack." The 1988 budget was a million dollars -- a figure that demanded constant fund raising. Says Brinker in her oddly tough half-whisper, "You have...
...Brinker no longer makes regular deliveries herself. Too many people have died, and it is agony to make new friends and lose them so inevitably. Still, if a client calls late to say he did not get his meal, Brinker will go into the kitchen, cook it and deliver it. When money runs short she uses her own. Sometime this year Open Hand will move to a new kitchen capable of producing 8,000 meals a day. "The money is really, really tight," confides chef Chris Medina. "In the past couple of months, we've been on the verge...