Los Altos Rotarians were floored during a Dec. 1 club meeting recognizing World AIDS day when a guest speaker related a heart-rending story about succeeding in life despite a horrific family history and testing HIV-positive.

The 26-year-old speaker from the Southeast, whose name is being withheld at her request to protect her privacy, is in her last year of law school at a prominent university and already has a master’s degree in international politics. Her academic success comes despite being orphaned at age 1 when her father went to prison for life for killing her mother, being abused at her aunt and uncle’s home and then being placed in an undesirable foster home. She subsequently contracted HIV in her teens from someone she loved and trusted and was left completely on her own at age 17.

But she persevered. She earned a bachelor’s degree from a liberal arts college in Georgia and was awarded a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to study at Leeds College in England for a year.

“You don’t expect someone with all the challenges of her youth and formative years to have the drive, determination, ability and willpower to pull herself up, meet the horrendous challenges head on, and accomplish what she has while maintaining a positive outlook on life,” Rotarian Wyatt Allen wrote in the club’s latest newsletter. “Rather than drop into despair upon learning of her HIV affliction, not to mention keeping a positive outlook despite the terrible travails of her youth, (she) has become an inspiration to any and all who have faced seemingly insurmountable challenges in life.”

After learning she had HIV, she turned to volunteering at service organizations and began speaking in schools to educate students about AIDS transmission and prevention. “She helped them understand that AIDS is not discriminatory and doesn’t only infect those with dangerous lifestyles,” Allen wrote. “In her words, she turned her mistake into a message for others in hopes of preventing others infected with HIV. Imagine the courage and self-confidence she had to muster in order to face strangers and share her tragic story with them.”

Former Rotary president Dude Angius, who invited the guest speaker, said her presentation was “so eloquent, so powerful, it knocked (the Rotary audience) off their feet.”

Angius, a former Los Altos High School principal, has been instrumental in leading the Los Altos Rotary Club in its fight against AIDS. Moved to action by the plight of his son, Steve, who died of AIDS, Angius and other Rotarians initiated the Rotary AIDS Project in 1989, which produced the moving “Los Altos Story,” a short documentary, still in demand throughout the world, chronicling the shock and emotional fallout of the AIDS’ deaths of Steve and Walter Singer, a beloved, prominent Los Altos businessman who announced he was HIV positive at a Rotary meeting.

Angius continues his work with the project, which he noted was the first and longest-running such Rotary program in the world. “Our focus continues to be prevention of infection through education and awareness,” he said.

Local Rotarians have helped in a variety of ways, including funding an AIDS clinic outside Johannesburg, South Africa. They are also currently supporting three Stanford students working in refugee camps in Zambia to raise money for services for HIV-infected women.

For more about the Rotary AIDS Project and other local efforts, visit www.losaltosrotary.org.