Everything is going to be OK
Darcy Padilla
Agence VU'
Winner of the 2013 Canon Female Photojournalist Grant
Jason found her around 3:45 am. He didn’t see her chest moving, checked her pulse. Julie was dead. Scared, he hoped her chest would “come back up.”
“I started to go into a panic. I didn’t get to say my last goodbye when she was alive. I told her that I loved her, that Elyssa and I loved her.”
For 18 years I documented Julie’s story of AIDS, poverty, relationships, drugs, births, deaths, loss and reunion. Following her from the streets of San Francisco to the woods of Alaska.
I first met Julie Baird on February 28, 1993. Julie stood in the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel, barefoot, pants unzipped, and an eight-day-old baby in her arms. She lived in a neighborhood of soup kitchens and cheap rooms. She lived with Jack, father of her first baby, Rachael, and who had given her AIDS. She left him months later to stop using drugs. Her first memory of her mother is getting drunk with her at six, and then being sexually abused by her stepfather. She ran away at fourteen and became a drug addict at fifteen, living in alleys and crack dens. Julie said, “Rachael has given me a reason to live.”
By the time Julie met Jason Dunn at a youth drug program in 1998, Rachael and her second child, Tommy, had been taken by the State of California.
Jason himself was taken from his parents as an infant. His mom was a teenage alcoholic and his dad went to prison because he robbed a corner store for diapers and cash with six-week-old Jason in the car.
At five, after 21 foster homes, the Dunn family adopted Jason. At 15, he found his adoption records that said his biological mother and family had physically, emotionally and sexually abused him as a baby.
He ran away. Started using speed and heroin. Jason survived, living on the streets of San Francisco, being a male prostitute making around $200-300 a day. “Back then, I was a garbage can for drugs.” And he became HIV-positive.
Julie and Jason had four children: Jordan, Ryan, Jason Jr. and Elyssa.
Elyssa was the only one they were able to keep and raise in their home off the grid in Alaska: no running water, no electricity and 20 miles from the nearest town. Julie went into hospice care. Jason was at her side, until she died on September 27, 2010.
Preview
Since Julie’s death he worries about Elyssa. She screams at everyone and doesn’t listen to anyone. He thinks that there might be something wrong.
He thinks Elyssa needs a woman in the home. When Julie was dying, Jason said, “I’ll never be with another woman. Julie is the last woman I will be with. Who is going to be with someone like me who has AIDS, up here in Alaska.”
Jason is constantly yelling at Elyssa. He feels like an awful person, but doesn’t know any other way to get Elyssa to listen. So he yells.
Jason has Hepatitis B, an enlarged liver, and the early stages of emphysema. But, he still smokes cigarettes and his medical marijuana. He lives off disability and does odd jobs.
In November 2011, Jason reunited with his adoptive family whom he had not seen in sixteen years. After viewing Julie’s story on my website, the family decided to help Jason, and wanted Elyssa to have a chance.
Jason and Elyssa moved to Oregon to live near his family in a furnished two-bedroom apartment. Elyssa took her first bath in a tub.
After six months Jason’s sister Corey was asked by the school counselor to take Elyssa. Jason had told the counselor that he was done with Elyssa, because all she did was yell at him, screaming: “I hate you, I hate you.”
Corey convinced Jason to let Elyssa live with her and told him “Everything is going to be OK…” Elyssa now lives with Corey, her husband, and their three children. The children call Elyssa their sister and Elyssa calls Corey “Mama.” Jason tries to come and see Elyssa once a week. He is in therapy hoping to control his anxiety so he can get Elyssa back.
Elyssa says she misses Julie and talks to her: “Mama in heaven” who comes to her in her sleep.
Darcy Padilla
Exhibition co-produced with the Photographic Social Vision Foundation.
