TV Reviews : Heart-Rending Look at AIDS in a Small Town on Financial News Network

AIDS seems to have been explored every which way but a most unusual half-hour film, “The Los Altos Story,” finds a most unlikely angle, the relationship between the virus and a local Rotary Club.

The film is full of unlikelies, among them that it will premiere this afternoon at 5 on the Financial News Network, which you ordinarily think of as the cable channel for people with a lot of spare change. It will be followed by a call-in segment.

Likewise unlikely, the movie was underwritten by Rotarians in very-upscale Los Altos, a nifty little Silicon Valley town (population 27,000; average home price $600,000). The Rotary, of course, is oriented to businessmen in smaller-town, suit-and-tie America and traditional middle-class values.

When the son of a former club president and popular educator lay dying of AIDS, the club decided it wanted to do some project on the epidemic, including sponsor a film. And during the first halting interview with the family by writer-director Robin Young and her crew, the son turned worse. An ambulance was called. He died that day.

Later, the president of a neighboring club wanted to help in the projects because, he announced, he has AIDS too.

And still later, during a luncheon meeting of the 110 members, an elderly local merchant, one of the most beloved men in town (he played Santa Claus at Christmas functions; he was called “Mr. Los Altos”), took the podium and described how he was given AIDS-infected blood during his heart bypass operation and that he, too, is dying.

It was a total surprise to club members as well as the filmmakers, who captured the moment.

There are no words to describe the faces of these weeping middle-aged men and women as they embraced their friend and spoke of their love for him.

The images leave us with the realization that if the Rotary Club of Los Altos is not immune, then none of us is immune.