Advocating against a deadly disease.

This article presents information on Baxter Thomas, who admits to having been a drug dealer, drug user, homeless, and incarcerated. The 48-year-old is also HIV positive, but he is never without hope. The fifth of nine children born to a single mom on welfare, he was raised in Queens, New York City. Poverty caused him to work a paper route and in a women's clothing factory from a young age. The desire for money and stylish clothes caused he to fall in with gang-bangers and dope-dealers in his Jamaica neighborhood. At 17 years old, Thomas was arrested for gun charges and spent 18 months in Rikers Island, then in an upstate facility.