Alison Gertz was born in 1966 into an affluent New York family and was just 16 when she contracted HIV after a sexual encounter with Cort Brown, a 27-year-old man whom she later identified as the person who had infected her. For years, she did not know she was carrying the virus, and at 22 she was diagnosed with AIDS after beginning to suffer serious health problems.
After learning of her diagnosis, Gertz devoted much of her life to educating young people about HIV and fighting the stigma associated with the disease. She died on August 8, 1992, at age 26, from AIDS-related pneumonia.