New York City A Beacon On Lonely Street

By DANIEL S. LEVY

Alice is a prostitute. She has worked the South Bronx for a year, servicing the men in the Porsches and Volkswagens that cruise the empty streets after dark. Scabs cover her arms from shooting heroin; her skin is pale, her body thin, her eyes puffy and tired looking, though she is only 18. Alice spends hundreds of dollars a day on her drug habit. "I shoot up as often as I can," she says, her legs twitching from the effect of the narcotic. "Practically everything I make I spend on drugs." She has no home and sleeps in other people's apartments. "This isn't the life I want to lead. I have no friends. I have no family. I have nothing."

There are hundreds of teenagers like Alice in the South Bronx, a crumbling stretch of New York City with one of the country's lowest per capita incomes. They stake out street corners and empty parks. They live in abandoned buildings, discarded cars, rusting boilers and cardboard boxes. Most come from broken homes with abusive parents. Nearly all are addicts, have severe medical problems and are regularly beaten by their customers. Some are killed. In order to aid these kids, Planned Parenthood of New York founded Project Street Beat, a neighborhood organization that trolls the Bronx, visiting the places where teenage prostitutes gather. It offers free medical treatment and counseling, hands out sandwiches, clean clothes, "bleach kits" for sterilizing needles, and "dignity packs": Ziploc toilet kits containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, soap, a towelette, condoms, tampons and sanitary napkins. Sometimes the workers drive the kids to a local McDonald's for a snack and a chance to talk.

Street Beat sees about 50 people each night. Since the program started in 1988, workers have made 7,000 face-to-face contacts with more than 1,000 teenagers. They have distributed 100,000 condoms along with thousands of dignity packs. "Planned Parenthood realized there was a population out there of homeless, runaway, throwaway youths who are totally forgotten," says Liz Russo, 28, Street Beat program director. "A lot of them haven't chosen to be there, and they are entitled to a whole range of services that they are not aware of. It's important that they get these services."

Street Beat ministers to the most vulnerable in an area where the high school dropout rate approaches 30% and where 1 out of every 43 babies is born with the AIDS virus. It focuses on children and young adults 13 to 25, but will assist anyone who requests help. "When you are on the streets, you can't be selective," says Russo. "You have to service everyone out there or else they will isolate you." Eighty-five percent of Street Beat's clients are female; some have up to 20 clients a night. "The girls out here work; they buy drugs; they sleep; they are like robots," says Mary, 31, a cherub-faced woman who walks the streets in order to support her own and her mother's crack habit. Most work for very little money. "Sometimes they go for a trick for $2 for a hit of crack because they are hurting," says Daniel Zayas, 32, Street Beat field supervisor. And then there are the constant dangers. So far 17 of Street Beat's clients have been killed by psychotics or gangs or in ritual murders. "They take murder for granted," says Zayas. "It is part of life on the street. A week out there and you are crazy."

Street Beat workers travel around in a minivan and a 31-ft.-long recreational vehicle, a wheeled medical-office-cum-rest-area equipped with an examination room, bathroom, shower and kitchen. The unit handles everything from minor scrapes and pregnancy screening to gunshot wounds. Forty-five percent of those tested for the AIDS virus are positive. "These kids operate outside the law and the health-care and social systems to such a degree that when they get on this van, they have no ID, no address, no nothing," says Ellen Flynn, 44, Street Beat's nurse practitioner. "We try to handle everything on their first visit because you don't know when you will see them again or if you will see them again."

Help goes beyond the roadside visits. Staff members encourage, even beg their clients to come in for counseling and proper medical treatment. They try to get them IDs, welfare, Medicaid, food stamps, equivalency diplomas and jobs, and arrange for their entry into shelters and drug-detoxification programs. "No one has talked to them about AIDS or hygiene," says Russo. "It is not that they are not educable. It is just that no one gives a damn." Because of Street Beat's efforts, a number of the youngsters are reconciled with their families, back in school or holding jobs.

Those who are still on the streets receive a basic level of support they once lacked. The workers are hosts of a Friday lunch program in their office. There they serve pizza and soft drinks, let the kids talk about their lives, and screen Bambi or the latest Schwarzenegger video on the office VCR. To promote AIDS prevention, they distribute Knightvision, a multicolor, action- packed comic book that tells the story of teenagers who face problems similar to those dealt with by the readers. There are also well-illustrated directions on cleaning hypodermic needles and using contraceptives.

When Street Beat first set up shop, the staff approached the local police stations and hospitals to announce their presence and to seek advice and assistance. Out on the street there was initial tension with the pimps, who felt threatened by any aid to their workers. But that quickly changed. "We have made the point that we are looking out for their kids," says Russo. "We are keeping their stable clean."

Street Beat's mobile units operate five nights a week. On this evening the medical van pulls up to a quiet corner below a harsh streetlight that illuminates closed-up warehouses and auto-body shops. The pavement glistens with water from fire hydrants, which addicts tap to clean their needles. One woman paces the sidewalk with her skirt pulled above her waist, and another crouches on the ground injecting heroin into her arm. Lines of cars circle the block. Girls, men and older couples flock toward the van.

Zayas leans out the window. "Hello, and how are you?" he says to one woman in a sheer blouse. He asks her for her first name, jots it down on his clipboard and hands her a number of alcohol packs so she can disinfect her skin before she shoots up, along with some condoms. "Be careful and make sure you use them, for everything," he warns. Condoms are the most popular giveaway, and many claim they always use them. Says Karen, 28, a spunky black woman with cropped hair, body-hugging white shorts and a loose-fitting top: "I got a bag full of rubbers and don't even have room for my makeup." Others are not so discriminating. Says Gloria, 19: "Sometimes business is so slow out there that when a person doesn't want to use a condom, I don't care."

A few board the van to see Flynn, eat one of the free sandwiches or look through the clothes bag. A young girl named Susan in a tight leopard-pattern top anxiously awaits the result of her test for the AIDS virus. "You are lucky this time," Zayas says as he puts his arm around her and walks her back across the street. "But you have to keep using condoms."

Mary is not so fortunate. She is one of three people that night who learn they have tested positive. She starts crying as Russo tries to comfort her. "You guys always listen," Mary sobs. "You always find the time to let us know you care." They counsel her for about 15 minutes and then drive the van to a McDonald's for a hamburger and a Coke. Afterward they have no choice but to drop her off on the street, where she heads back to work.

The most important service that Street Beat offers is friendly and helpful contact beyond the hard streets of the Bronx. "We provide some dignity and respect," says Zayas. "It is sometimes all they get." Alice finishes eating her cheese-and-bologna sandwich and gets ready to head back outside. "Street Beat is good," she says. "No one else helps. If they didn't help, these kids would be dead."