When Graig Cote found out he was HIV positive, he told a friend: “I don’t want to die.”
A lecturer at Ohio State who also coaches volleyball at Thomas Worthington High School, Cote said he did not completely understand the virus when he was informed that he had it. All he knew was that there was a strong chance he could die. Many of Cote’s friends had died from the virus.
“Everybody that I knew my freshman year, they’re all dead,” Cote said. “I’ve probably lost a couple hundred people that I knew here or there. For 10 years, I had nobody to say, ‘Remember when we did things?'”
Cote attended OSU and studied psychology. He now teaches an HIV and AIDS awareness course on Wednesdays. He has four older sisters and a younger brother. Cote was born in Orlando, Fla., but has lived in Ohio for most of his life. He moved to San Francisco around 1990 because he did not want to tell his family he was HIV positive.
“I had no intentions of ever telling them,” Cote said.
Eric Duff, 46, was in the room when Cote informed his family.
“It was a relief that he finally told his family,” Duff said. “I think they already knew that something was wrong, they could see his health declining. He had a lot of facial wasting. You could see the bone structure.”
Cote’s family members embraced him when he told them around 1998, but they were still concerned.
“I think I fell on the bed,” Cote’s mother, Beverly, said. “I told him he’d better get right with the Lord. It’s like a death sentence.”
Cote was called an embarrassment to his family by someone. Someone said he should “just die.”
“Not everyone was accepting,” Cote said. “One girl said she couldn’t be around me.”
Cote’s mother thinks the loss of so many friends has encouraged him to be as active as he is in raising awareness.
“I think maybe that’s what caused him to take the route he’s taking,” his mother said. “He knows what he wants to do. He’s on a mission.”
At one point in Cote’s life, he dropped from 185 pounds to 125 pounds in one month. In 1995, he was taking 42 pills throughout the day and feeling effects from both HIV and the medicine. He considered this time his lowest point.
The story will conclude on Monday.