Associated Press - Tuesday, December 29, 1992

The knowledge that she had contracted the AIDS virus on the streets hasn't been enough to keep Donna Redmond from selling sex to support her crack cocaine habit.

And she knows she puts more people at risk of getting the deadly virus with each customer.

"You don't care," said Redmond, 31. "Cocaine will pimp you. It's hell. It will destroy you. You'll do anything for it. You'll lie and cheat and steal just to get a hit.

"Once you take that first hit and get hooked, you'll do anything," she said. "You'll lay down with anybody and steal from your mom and dad. I've sold my body for $5 to get a hit."

She believes she has passed on the deadly virus.

"I feel bad. I feel remorse," she said. "I feel awe that I passed a deadly disease around. If I had it to do again, I wouldn't prostitute. But that rock cocaine will make you do anything."

Last Christmas she was hungry, cold and on the streets. "I asked God to feed me and give me love. My prayer was answered. I got arrested. The church ladies came by and they held me and told me they loved me. I got fed."

She was released from jail Aug. 31 after pleading with Judge Charles Curry to let her go home to live with her parents.

But Redmond didn't stay there long. She returned to the streets and never followed through on the Social Security disability or food stamps her parents helped her to get.

She was arrested in September and again on Dec. 4 as Polk County sheriff's deputies stepped up prostitution arrests.

She is being held on a $6,000 bond. Judge Ronald Herring has ordered that Redmond have no chance of release under any pre-trial program or overcrowding order.

"There's men out there that I've been with that I'm too scared or too ashamed to tell them about it," she said. "But I can't say that I gave it to them because they do it with everybody."

Redmond believes she contracted the virus that causes AIDS three or four years ago while working the streets of Inwood, Auburndale and Haines City.

She has told men who picked her up that she has AIDS, and some have thrown her out of their car. With others, she has tried to just offer sex, take the cash, and then get out of the car.

"I see new girls out there and I talk to them," she said. "I say, 'Look at me, barefoot, walking around hungry and tired, standing on the street corner for hours.'

"I tell them, 'You're going to be like me if you don't get off the streets,"' she said. "They all know I have AIDS. But yet, they still do it because of rock cocaine. They don't care. There's no reaching us when we're on it."
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