Rockett (arm raised) celebrates in 2005

Rita Rockett learned to share food and good wishes from her mother in Ohio. "Whenever the neighbors had troubles," she says, "my mother would send me over with food."

But food isn't all she brings to her new neighbors at San Francisco General Hospital. She also serves up some high kicks (she changed her last name, in honor of the Rockettes) and laughs. Patients on the often forgotten Ward 5A count on this young mother to show up with food, music, and dancing.

"All I want to do is entertain my guys," says Rockett. She met some of her "guys" through a gay friend who comforted her during a time of personal suffering and introduced her to the gay community of San Francisco. When one of her new friends developed AIDS, Rockett wanted to do something to help. She planned a brunch at the hospital to cheer him up, but he died before the brunch took place. She offered it anyway, for the other patients there, and her work at Ward 5A began.

The parties help Rockett deal with the sadness of seeing so many friends die. "I wanted something to hold on to," she explained. "Getting involved helps me resolve the loss."

The hospital staff see how much she\'s helping the men who are often abandoned and despised. "She creates a sense among the patients that they're not alone, that they're not lepers," says a Ward 5A nurse. And "lepers" is how many AIDS patients were characterized in the 1980s, when the disease was just breaking onto the scene, and Rockett was doing what she could to help.

Aside from putting on parties at the ward, Rockett, who works as a corporate travel agent, opens the home she shares with her young son to the families and friends who do come to San Francisco to visit patients.

"I feel blessed to have found a way to help out in this crisis," she says. "When the epidemic is over," she says, smiling, "I'm going to give the party of the century and dance on the biggest table I can find!"—1987

For a 2005 update on the amazing Ms. Rockett, click here.

For a 2018 update on Ms. Rockett, click here.