El Paso AIDS patients make before financial ruin is a small upstairs office at the Desert Rainbow Center on Montana Avenue. A handful of requests arrive here nearly every day, forwarded by social service agencies throughout El Paso and nearby counties. A laborer fired from his job needs rent money. A mother can't afford diapers for her baby.
Someone needs help buying medicine.
But to clients of the AIDS Project of El Paso, those checks mean the difference between despair and hope. They are the single organization in town that makes the biggest difference in the lives of HIV clients. Maillet collects the requests sent to him by other social workers in the area and then forwards them to the organization's all-volunteer staffers, who cut the checks within 24 hours. The requests range from paying for medical bills and utilities to wheelchairs and funerals. Every one is considered.