Ray Sharkey and Elena Monica's AIDS
Ron Turner
Idol Hunter, to Ray Sharkey, to this. It's an old 1995 article. Still pretty
interesting, though. Thought I'd share it.
From the Miami Herald.
The photographer is ready. Elena Monica gives her tumble of auburn curls a
quick shake, glancing into the floor-to-ceiling mirror, and settles onto the
edge of a sofa.
"Do I have to be serious?" she asks, feigning a scowl. "All the pictures make
me look like I'm suffering."
That's the way we expect people with HIV to look, of course: Wasted. Haunted.
Shadowed by doom. Nothing like Elena Monica, who could hop right back into the
Levis commercials or the Home Box Office movies she used to make, and no one
would be the wiser.
Still, the question can't be avoided.
"I'm not suffering," she replies. A half-second elapses. "Today."
She'd had her share already, and is realistic enough to anticipate more in the
future.
But today is all about IFARA -- the International Foundation for Alternative
Research in AIDS she founded last year -- and the high-glam auction fund-raiser
she's planning on its behalf Tuesday, sday at China Grill on South Beach.
Her father, the durable comic Corbett Monica, who used to guest-host for Johnny
Carson on The Tonight Show, will emcee. Jack Nicholson, Gregory Peck, Michael
Caine, Steven Bauer and Shari Belafonte are expected.
IFARA is a nonprofit organization that Monica says will support research into
alternative and conventional HIV/AIDS therapies. The money raised Tuesday, sday
should fund IFARA's first grant, to be made in early 1996. Grants will help
investigate Chinese medicine, visualization and traditional treatments that may
be federally approved for conditions other than AIDS.
Monica, 30, moved from Southern California to Miami Beach last year because
"there are a lot of philanthropic dollars here that could go to the cause. And
(the) Miami (metropolitan area) has the third largest incidence of AIDS in the
country.
"Then there's my quality of life . . . L.A. has become very oppressed. I was
very aware of the smog."
Learned she was infected Monica learned four years ago that she was infected
with HIV. It was clear who'd given it to her, even though he swore he couldn't
have: Ray Sharkey, the Wiseguy star whose AIDS death in 1993 shocked nearly
everyone in Hollywood . . . except Elena Monica.
Five months into their seven-month relationship, she fell critically ill with
aseptic meningitis. During a month's hospitalization, she was attacked by
hepatitis, pancreatitis and gastroenteritis. Blood tests revealed HIV.
"I'd been tested a few months earlier and was negative," she says. "By process
of elimination, it had to be him." Dr. Eric Daar, head of the AIDS research
program at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, who diagnosed Monica, supports
that assessment. Unlike many HIV patients, Monica got hit hard early by an
AIDS-related catastrophic disease. Many patients manifest only a flu-like
primary infection that subsides. "Nobody knows why some people get sicker,"
says Daar, who's on IFARA's medical advisory board. "That's one of our areas of
research."
(Medical and lay board members will determine where IFARA's money goes. Other
members include Kevin Clark, clinical supervisor of the University of Miami's
acupuncture program; Kaiya Montaocean, codirector of the Center for Natural and
Traditional Medicines in Washington, D.C., and IFARA codirector Fred Schaik, a
Pompano Beach AIDS activist.)
Daar says that doctors give the average HIV patient 10 years between onset and
death. Whether the margin of error favors optimism or pessimism for Monica, she
whips through her days as if every second counts.
Powered by natural medicines, vitamins, healthy food and endorphins -- thanks
to running, tae kwon do, tennis and golf -- the former California State/Los
Angeles nutrition major is genial and polite, but wastes little time on
distractions from her mission, which evolved from what she calls a near-death
experience.
"I was dying . . ." she says, of her hospitalization with meningitis. "On some
level, I knew I was being clued into the fact that I could stay or go . . . I
wanted to stay there, but didn't get to, and here I am."
Global breakdown
Here, to confront not only the weakness of her own immune system and the wrong
turns in her past, but the "breakdown in our global immune system," manifested
in so much human misery, and the contributions she wants to make toward
solutions.
Her temporary digs, on the 14th floor of an oceanfront Collins Avenue
high-rise, contains a lot of beige carpet, very little furniture, and myriad
phones.
Her mother, Helen Monica, moved from New Jersey into the building last week, to
be closer.
Monica's bedside reading is testimony to a quest for spiritual growth and
healing: the Koran, the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, the Book of Mormon,
the Bible, the works of Marianne Williamson. She regularly visits a spiritual
leader called Ma at an ashram in Sebastian, Fla.
"She taught me to deal with death, life, silence, compassion, laughter, HIV,"
says Monica. "How did I deal with the anger? A lot of therapy, and by applying
spiritual principles."
She says she began her "spiritual path" 10 years ago, when she got clean and
sober at 20, after a wild adolescence. Her diagnosis "changed every breath I
take. It deepened my zest for life and love of people. But I was striving
before that." Mother Teresa gazes from a framed portrait in the bedroom. So do
Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara, locked in their legendary embrace. Gone With
The Wind has been Monica's obsession since adolescence. She's seen it at least
once a year since, and named her puppy Olivia, for GWTW actress Olivia de
Havilland.
She loves Scarlett's "passion and her tenacity," and ever since her first
glimpse of the suave Rhett Butler, she's thought: "That's my guy."
Met Sharkey
For awhile, she thought Ray Sharkey was, too. They met at a party in February
1991. He was still married, but a notorious philanderer. Also a drug abuser and
recovering drunk.
"He was wild," says Monica. "What attracted me was his tremendous talent. He
was deep, very deep . . ." What she didn't know was that he also was very sick.
Diagnosed with HIV in 1987, Sharkey convinced himself he harbored a strain that
never would endanger himself or anyone else. He lied to Monica and other women
about his condition, infecting her and at least one other she knows. And
destroying her sense of trust.
In 1992, Details magazine quoted a member of the 12-step group Sharkey
attended: "He is the Johnny Appleseed of AIDS."
"We used condoms in the beginning," says Monica, "but I kept asking him if he
had been tested and he stated adamantly he was fine. . . .
"The most difficult thing for me is to accept that I didn't take responsibility
for making him get tested."
And so she has spent much of her time talking to college audiences, spreading a
simple message: Use condoms. Get tested. Demand that your partner get tested.
Remember that even though you may be a heterosexual who doesn't shoot dope,
you're still at risk.
"Elena's diagnosis was originally missed for exactly that reason," says Eric
Daar. "She was not in one of the high-risk groups."
Sued him In 1992, she sued Sharkey for $52 million. Sharkey declined to
challenge the suit, which she won in a default judgment after his death. But
Sharkey died broke, so there is no money for Monica.
She went to see him at the Palm Springs home he shared with his mother about a
month before he died, seeking "closure" -- an admission and an apology.
She got neither.
"He was 98 pounds, skin and bones," she recalls. " He moved like an old man . .
. Here he's got 17 bottles of pills next to him, (but) he was in so much
denial, how could he think he would infect someone else? By going there, I got
something better than an apology. I knew his infecting me wasn't malicious or
intentional."
Broke the news It took Monica a year to gather the emotional strength to tell
her family.
"I knew it was going to be on the 5 p.m. news that I'd filed suit," she
recalls.
Her father said, "My poor baby; what can I do?" I said, "Just love me. Support
me."
And this he has done.
Corbett and his second wife, Ann, longtime snowbirds, two years ago moved near
the Aventura Mall, where he plans to open a restaurant. He still tours with
Frank Sinatra, Liza Minnelli, and Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme..
He calls his daughter's situation "frustrating and devastating . . . "The only
thing that keeps me sane is that she is so courageous, and the work she's
pursuing is so valuable. . . . But you forget; she's so healthy and vital."
Indeed, Elena Monica figures that if her belief is correct, that HIV is
evolving into a "manageable" chronic condition -- a view Eric Daar supports --
she'll be a better person for having dealt with disease.
"I like myself much better now, and I've given the people who like me more to
like."
Alternative treatment As soon as the fund-raiser is over, Monica will prepare
for a week of alternative treatment planned for December.
"It's FDA-approved for certain types of cancer, but not AIDS," she explains. "I
don't want to say what it is because I don't want a million people calling me
with the pros and cons."
She has not taken AZT but doesn't disparage conventional treatments.
"Whatever you're putting into your body should be treated with respect," she
says.
She and her boyfriend, a South Florida marketer/developer, have talked about
adopting a child.
"People adopt babies every day," she says, "and they're as apt to get run over
by a bagel truck as I am" to die of AIDS. She remains resolute about planning
for the future.
Not that she doesn't endure "moments of tremendous fear and trepidation."
She's afraid of suffering, says Monica, but not afraid of death.
"I've been there."
**************************************************
Remembering Princess Diana :-(
Reading "Complete Book of US Presidents" by William Degregorio
dustbunny
a jerk, but the episodes of Wiseguy that he was in were some of the best
ever.
Evelyn
Ron Turner <rbt...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20000902150442...@ng-fk1.aol.com...
Ron Turner
>What happened to Elena Monica -- is she still alive? I guess Ray Sharkey was
>a jerk, but the episodes of Wiseguy that he was in were some of the best
>ever.
>
>Evelyn
I haven't seen her in any of the obits. I guess she's still alive.
Baby Strange
dustbunny <dust...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:8orlbo$4iv$1...@slb2.atl.mindspring.net...
> What happened to Elena Monica -- is she still alive? I guess Ray Sharkey
was
> a jerk, but the episodes of Wiseguy that he was in were some of the best
> ever.
>
> Evelyn
Looks like she's still very much alive--here's a link to the agency that
gets her speaking gigs...
http://www.greatertalent.com/cgi-bin/speakers/db?keyword=000413&db=speakers&
uid=&ascend=&view_records=1
Beaver...@live.com
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-woman-arrested--beating-boyfriend-mother-20150920-story.html
Dirk Hammerschlong
vikbr...@gmail.com
Is a slap in the face of those who thought HIV were a death sentence, even though she almost died from AIDS.
She never took AZT for what I saw in a earlier interview, I think Magic Johnson had the same treatment as her.
Its really sad about Ray Sharkey daughter outcome.
How was she raised?