Growing up in the picturesque seaside town of San Pedro, Calif., in the late '80s, Jamie Morales, then 5, had little time for other kids or the beach. "Most of her free time was spent with family members dying with AIDS," said Sandy Hyson, her legal guardian.

Devastated by the death of her mother, her grandfather and other close family members and friends, Jamie, at 8, began to cope by talking to others about the disease. In 1997, she put together a half-hour slide show drawn from old family photos, which she has shown to more than 15,000 people in Kansas and around the country. Recently she spoke to thousands of schoolchildren in South Africa, where the AIDS virus strikes almost one-quarter of the black population in poor townships. Jamie has earned many national honors for her work, yet she still misses her family.

"Grandpa Louie died when I was 5, my uncle Jeff when I was 6, and my mom when I was 7 -- all from AIDS," said Jamie from her Wichita, Kan., home. Now 18, Jamie plans to study veterinary medicine for exotic African animals.

Hyson, a health education teaching specialist working in Wichita, met Jamie through a mutual family friend. After meeting Jamie's mother, Renee, in the hospital just before her death, Sandy asked Jamie to move to Wichita and live with her, and Jamie agreed. Ronald Morales, her father, was also infected with the disease and was unable to care for his daughter. He later followed her to Wichita.

After relocating there, Jamie was very fearful of staying at home with a baby sitter. Hyson traveled extensively throughout the state giving lectures on sex education. She took Jamie to her evening lectures, and the little girl watched her guardian drawing diagrams on the board about the body's immune system during infection.

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