Chicago Tribune (CT) - SUNDAY, July 20, 1997 Edition: DU PAGE FINAL Section: METRO DU PAGE Page: 3 Word Count: 929
Lynn Van Matre, Tribune Staff Writer.

The Aurora woman's past includes prostitution, drug and alcohol addictions, and penitentiary stints for burglary and armed robbery. Her three children, the first conceived when Mosier was 15, were raised by a relative. Not even a devastating diagnosis of carrying the human immunodeficiency virus in 1992 caused her to change her destructive lifestyle.

"I hit every pit there was to hit," Mosier said. "I had no dignity left, and I thought I was crap in the eyes of God and society. But I've come a long way since then."

Today, sober, spiritually grounded and reconciled with her three grown children, Mosier, 39, is a volunteer with the Kane County Health Department Speakers Bureau.

In her new role, she gives AIDS awareness talks for school and civic groups and serves as a positive role model in presentations at homeless shelters such as Hesed House in Aurora, where Mosier lived for the first half of the 1990s.

"When most people from the Health Department come here and give talks about AIDS, there is a part of people's brains that says, 'You don't know what it's like to be in my situation,' " said Diane Nilan, associate director of Hesed House.

"Frances has been there and done that; she's not talking theoretically. So people are more likely to listen when she tells them that no matter what they have done in their lives, they can change things and become a positive force."

According to Nancy Gier, spokeswoman for the DuPage County Health Department, AIDS education speakers and peer counselors from high-risk backgrounds are not uncommon, but Mosier's candor about her past is rare.

"In DuPage, for example, we have a peer counselor from a similar background, but she is guarded about her past because she has small children and is protective of them," Gier said.

For Mosier, the payoff for laying bare her past comes when she feels she has made a difference in people's lives.

"I know that some people I have talked to have gone back to school and are getting their GEDs," she said. "When I was struggling with drugs and prostitution, if someone who identified with my situation had told me that there was a way out of the pits of hell, I truly believe that I would have listened to them. But nobody like that talked to me."

Mosier, who is attending a community college and plans to become a substance-abuse and AIDS counselor, said that she believes she was infected with the AIDS virus through heterosexual contact.

According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heterosexual contact has been the most common route of infection for women since 1992, though the majority of female cases of HIV and AIDS remain directly or indirectly associated with injection drug use.

Though recent government statistics indicate that deaths from AIDS are dropping, deaths among women with the disease dropped only 7 percent during the first nine months of 1996, compared with a drop of 22 percent among men during the same period.

Among women age 25 to 44, AIDS is currently the fourth-leading cause of death, according to the CDC.

"When I was first diagnosed with HIV, I thought my life was over," said Mosier, who now is living with AIDS.

"I went right back into the streets, smoking crack and working as a prostitute, though I always used protection because I didn't want to infect anyone else. My life just kept going down the drain."

For Mosier, the turning point came in 1994, when her longtime search for an end to her addictions led her to the Aurora Faith Center, a non-denominational Christian group. After several relapses into drugs and prostitution, she believes that she was healed permanently of her addictions during a Good Friday service in 1995.

Mosier's troubles weren't quite over. Two days later, as she was leaving Hesed House for Easter Sunday services, police arrived with a warrant for Mosier's arrest on some old burglary charges. She later served time at Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln, Ill.

"But I walked through the jail gates with the joy of the Lord in my heart," said Mosier, who earned an HIV/AIDS trainer-educator certificate while in prison.

After being released on parole, Mosier moved back to Aurora in May. Through Hesed House staff members, she met Yvonne Pena, disease-investigation specialist for the Kane County Health Department, and began working on a volunteer basis with the speakers bureau.

"Frances is especially valuable in dealing with people who have been in her situation," Pena said. "I can give people basic information, which is all well and good, but Frances puts a face to what HIV and AIDS is all about, and that adds a richness to her message."

Mosier recently got a job at a restaurant. She hopes to begin working professionally as an AIDS and substance-abuse counselor within the next few years.

"There are quite a few people who really want a way out" of a destructive way of life, Mosier said.

"I want to tell them that you can get help. You can get the education you need and a better job and come up feeling that you have accomplished something in your life."

CAPTION: PHOTO: Frances Mosier (left), who has AIDS and speaks to groups about it for the Kane County Health Department, visits at Hesed House with Diane Nilan, associate director of the shelter in Aurora. Tribune photo by Ed Wagner. (DuPage edition, Metro DuPage section, Page 2.)

Copyright 1997/The Chicago Tribune. Reproduced with permission. Reproduction of this article (other than one copy for personal reference) must be cleared through the Permissions Desk, The Chicago Tribune, 435 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611.
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