She was 18 and working in a convenience store when she was robbed and raped. One of the men who sexually assaulted her later was determined to have AIDS.
She and her husband learned they were infected about seven years later, before researchers finished creating the multidose combination of medications that can keep the virus in check. It was a struggle then, more so than it is now, to make women understand their potential risk. Women who were infected struggled with fear and depression if they knew they had the virus.
Pickett's message is simple: People need to realize the disease potentially could affect anyone, as it did her.
At the end of 2008, Polk County has about 1,600 people living with either HIV or AIDS. Of those, about 600 were women.
People living with HIV still need support groups, she said. "I couldn't have lived the first five years without a support group," said Pickett, who moved to Lakeland in 2000.
Yet she doesn't know of any in Polk County now except one organized by patients at the Polk County Health Department's HIV clinic. Groups used to meet more regularly here.
Interviewed by The Ledger in 1994 when she lived in Moore Haven, the young mother said she was talking to schools, corrections officials, medical groups and anyone who would listen.
She's steadfastly conveyed her message of AIDS' ubiquitousness through the years. Prominent on the Web site of Friends Together, her nonprofit HIV-AIDS education group she organized after moving to Lakeland, is the reminder: Only men, women and children get AIDS.
Friends Together focuses on education, children and HIV-infected families.
Far fewer children get infected each year in the United States than they did a decade ago.
But the number of women known to be living with the disease grows steadily.
From 2004-2007, there was a 14 percent increase in annual HIV-AIDS diagnoses among females. And there was a 9 percent increase among high-risk heterosexual men. A woman is twice as likely as a man to get HIV infection during vaginal sex, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 2007, Florida had the highest number of females 15 to 44 years old in the nation, 8,427, living with HIV infection. It had the second-highest number in that age group, 7,027, living with AIDS, trailing only New York.
Although she and other women live much longer now, issues still remain in getting appropriate care.
"It's a huge gap in rural communities," she said. "You don't have a wide selection of private physicians."
That's becoming increasingly important. As people living with HIV age and develop other illnesses, they need specialists in those diseases, she said.
Back in 1994, Cathy Robinson had one primary fear: Not living long enough to see her two children - neither of whom are infected - get through elementary school.
Now, at 44, she's looking forward to seeing Garrett, her younger child, graduate from Lakeland High School next spring. Lyndsy, her daughter, attends Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, seeking a double major in English and anthropology.
Through the years, both children have supported the HIV outreach and related wellness efforts their mother organizes at Florida Southern College and statewide.
Friends Together's family camps, held several times a year as money allows, helps parents guide infected children into adulthood. Telephone calls and e-mails keep the connection going year-round.
Children who came as elementary school pupils now are in college, but they come back for Friends Together events. There won't be a camp this Halloween, however, because funds aren't available.
Funding always has been on a shoestring, raised through donations and efforts such as bicycle rides between Tallahassee and Southwest Florida. Garrett made the ride several times. In 2006, he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to raise money for Friends Together and to scatter the ashes of his late stepfather, Steve Pickett.
Cathy Robinson married Pickett in 2003. Her previous marriage, to Dan Robinson, had ended in divorce.
She and Pickett co-founded Friends Together in 2000-01. He climbed the mountain in 2004 and was planning to go again, but died in an April 2005 automobile accident.
[ Robin Williams Adams can be reached at robin.adams@theledger.com or 863-802-7558. Read her blog at robinsrx.theledger.com. ]