25 faces: Leaders fighting HIV/AIDS in Colorado

9 Jane Bohlen

Volunteering is work with its own rewards, Jane Bohlen, 79, of Centennial said.

“If you have your time and you give of your time for any cause, it’s rewarding to you,” she said.

Every Thursday Bohlen travels to the Colorado AIDS Project’s main office in Denver to offer her services: She answers phones and distributes bus passes to clients.

She was first connected to HIV/AIDS in 1993 through her church, St. Andrew United Methodist Church in Highlands Ranch, a reconciling congregation with a gay pastor. But the issue has personal significance to her as well.

In 1979, her niece living in New York City, who had received a blood transfusion, died of AIDS even before it was named.

“She died of Pneumocytus” – a form of pneumonia that is common in AIDS patients and rare elsewhere – “and they eventually found out that a donor had HIV,” Bohlen said.

While there’s been big improvement since those days, Bohlen said, the issue isn’t over.

“When I started, the saying was kinda, ‘you die with AIDS,’ now it’s ‘youwith AIDS,’” she said. “There was a stigma everywhere about a person with AIDS, people thinking you got it from a toilet seat or shaking hands – that’s pretty much gone away. It’s a big improvement, but we need to keep working,” she said.

Bohlen’s message is simple: “If you’re having sex, get tested for HIV,” she said, “And keep supporting CAP with donations, food or money,” and volunteer.

“They always need volunteers,” she said.