Iris

“I want to help. It’s just the way I’m built, to help.”

You can’t miss Iris when she walks into a room. First of all, she’s tall. Second of all, she shines. You want to go stand next to her because her smile is bright and her laughter is infectious. It’s her innate warmth that led her to become a massage therapist. She remembers a massage demonstration in her high school, where the presenter was talking about the power that positive touch can have. “I realized that I was a person that my friends wanted to touch—they would lean on me, ask for hugs. I felt that message about touch was a message just for me.” Iris is now a massage therapist, and she enjoys bringing people more in tune with their bodies, and easing their pain.

Iris has a lot of personal style, and those funky frames for her glasses that are the hallmark of good taste and good humor. It’s fun to look at her hip, earth–mama style and know that on the inside she’s really a science fiction geek. Books, movies, TV shows, the whole gamut. She claims there’s no Star Trek uniforms hanging in the back of her closet, but you never really know…

She loves to cook, especially to bake, and to feed her family of friends. She’s a specialist in scones, but recently made a chocolate pink peppercorn ganache for her cupcakes that was so good it warranted a moment of reverent reflection.

When Iris first heard about the HIV vaccine studies, she thought is was definitely something she wanted to be a part of. “I knew people with HIV. But also, I was seeing all these people who I admire, actors, writers, seeing them die from AIDS. Those voices are gone to us now. It just didn’t seem right.”

She says that her friends always ask her if she has HIV, or if she’ll get it from the vaccine. She explains that she isn’t HIV positive, and that the vaccine can’t cause an HIV infection. She feels good about being part of something that might lead to the end of the epidemic. “That’s how I’m built,” she says, “to help.”