Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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San Francisco Examiner, Wednesday, April 7, 1999
Ulysses Torassa, Examiner Medical Writer
The letter, purportedly signed by Executive Director Pat Christen, was mailed Saturday from San Francisco in envelopes that appear to be from the AIDS Foundation. But the letter is a forgery, Christen said.
"I'm saddened that somebody would feel that this would be a good use of their time," she said.
Christen said she did not know who might have sent the letter. The organization, with more than 100 employees, is about to begin union negotiations. Issues mentioned in the letter, such as the distribution of revenues from the annual AIDS Walk, also have been raised by a few AIDS activists.
The letter claims Christen makes $200,000 per year, and her salary was to be cut to $90,000 to free more money for subsidies for people with AIDS. But Christen said she made $175,000 per year, an amount in keeping with the heads of AIDS organizations of similar size, and there were no plans to change that.
The letter also claims that henceforth 80 percent of the board of directors and senior management will be made up of people with AIDS or HIV. About 40 percent of the current board of directors is HIV-positive, Christen said, and several members of senior management also are living with the virus. The letter claims none of the top executives has HIV.
Christen said the group didn't plan to take action to find out who had sent the letter.
"It would be a waste of time," she said. "It's a silly distraction to do things like this. There's a lot of important and challenging work to do here."
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