Saturday, January 27, 2001

By ROBIN WILLIAMS ADAMS
The Ledger

BARTOW -- Cathy Robinson, who promotes AIDS awareness locally and statewide, will be honored today by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce as one of Ten Outstanding Young Americans for 2001.

She has won several awards since she began speaking in the early 1990s about her experience as a rape survivor whose attacker infected her with HIV, the virus leading to AIDS.

For three years, she has worked part time with the Polk County Health Department and with local AIDS groups. At the Health Department, she is a project director and an education and training specialist.

"We're very proud of her winning the award," said Woody Wilbanks, Area 14 HIV/AIDS project coordinator at the Health Department.

"She's very deserving."

This award and her selection last year as a National Point of Light illustrate the importance of the fight against AIDS, Robinson said.

"It's a big deal," she said of the Outstanding Young Americans award, which has been won in the past by former presidents John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton.

"You can see by the people who won it. It's not the Cathy Robinsons. It's the presidents and Elvis (Presley). It's kind of awesome."

Until recently, Robinson, 35, lived in Fort Myers with her family. She now rents a home in Lakeland, she said.

She travels throughout Florida, teaching and talking with community groups, to make people aware that AIDS can strike any family. Her own children aren't infected, but she works with children and adults who are.

Her husband became infected during the seven years that passed between her rape in 1984 and their 1991 diagnosis. She said they learned they had HIV during what they thought would be routine physicals for life insurance.

The Cathy Robinson Foundation, which she began, is dedicated to providing scholarships and other help for children affected by HIV/AIDS, she said.

Friends-Together, a new organization begun with a colleague at the Health Department, promotes AIDS advocacy and education. Its Web site is friendstogether.org.

Robinson works with Florida Southern College on annual activities involving the AIDS quilt, teaches Health Department classes to people with HIV/AIDS and their families, and represents this area on different boards, Wilbanks said.