Blessed with beauty and bodacious body parts, Playboy Playmate (September 1986) Rebekka Armstrong’s early misfortunes were born of the fact no one pointed out those blessings to her. She spent her youth chasing phantoms through crystal methedrin escapes, wearing out her body and spirit.

When Armstrong has a child, she will teach him or her: One, the importance of an education; two the importance of life-skills; and three, the dangers of drugs and unprotected sex. “I refuse to go by Nancy Reagan’s ‘Just Say No’ advice. Kids are sponges and want as much information as they can get.” Until then, Armstrong is strong-arming youth nationwide with those three tenets. What’s a former Playboy Princess doing preaching such gospel? Well, Rebekka is HIV-positive.

“Low self-esteem, peer pressure, wanting someone to love and accept me, that’s how it happened,” she explains. Armstrong was diagnosed three years after her turn in Playboy’s pages and thereafter lived a life that was killing her. “I wanted to stay awake because I thought I was dying.” Which was true, but not for the reasons she thought. A failed suicide attempt propelled Rebekka into the maw of the American medical establishment, where she began a slow climb out of her private hell. The self-styled “AIDS activist, safer sex/HIV/AIDS educator and certified phlebologist” says she’s living clean and setting an example. “It’s a powerful message to other women with HIV that you can live a healthy life, still feel sexy, and still have sex.”

see also www.rebekkaarmstrong.com°