But among the flowers are gnomes and steppingstones that patients have brought by, or in certain cases, that their families donated after a death. Patients that Razzeca is treating for AIDS will sometimes sit out in the garden while receiving treatment.

It was some of those patients who brought Razzeca's efforts to the attention of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, who just awarded her the Leslie David Burgess Lifetime Achievement Award. Named for the Public Health Department's first HIV educator, the award is given to individuals who show initiative and dedication in the fight against HIV and AIDS on a local level. As an HIV specialist in immunology, Razzeca does research and treats patients at her Sunnyvale office, but also reaches beyond to educate the public.

"We're far from a cure right now. There were some vaccine studies presented in Bangkok that were not promising," Razzeca says. "Anyone who has sex is at risk, and 95 percent of the women we're seeing got infected through heterosexual transmission." She adds that most new infections are occurring in women between the ages of 15 and 25.

Statistics like those have prompted Razzeca to participate in a number of activities, including visits to local high schools, including Fremont and Los Altos high schools, to impress upon youngsters the importance of protecting themselves. "I would first get up there by myself, and I'd see their eyes start to glaze over," she says. "I started taking patients to talk about how they contracted HIV--these young, attractive women--and show how many pills they have to take and talk about what their day is like."

She has also held bimonthly support groups for women with HIV since 1996, and she co-chaired a session on women and HIV at the International AIDS Conference in Thailand in July. It's there, she says, where it becomes very apparent how lucky Americans are to have access to medication--and that many women the world over don't have control over their own bodies. Next September, Razzeca will head to Botswana, where the infection rate is exploding, to set up an HIV/AIDS clinic there.

"It's not relegated to one segment of the population. A majority of my patients are still men," she says, "but I think a lot of women have a hard time because they always feel like they have to look after someone else."

Treating patients is one part of Razzeca's practice, which she's had at Camino Medical Group's Treatment Office for 10 years, alongside the oncologists and cancer patients who share the space. She actively treats about 300 patients, one of whom even flies in from Rio de Janeiro every three months for treatment.

Razzeca also holds a yearly "HIV update" conference for her patients to review the latest advances in medication and research, which happens to make up the other part of her practice. She became interested in immunology while completing post-doctoral work at Stanford University, where she attended medical school. "Immunology was just opening up, and AIDS was just first being recognized at that time," Razzeca says, referring to the early 1980s. "There wasn't a lot known about it at that point."

She became interested in T-cell receptors, which are part of the immune system. Continuing research in that area today gives her hope that new drugs, those that bolster and preserve the immune system, will give rise to a new generation of treatments.

But as much as she learns through research, Razzeca says she learns more with each patient. "You know patients for so long and you work with them for so long that it's difficult when they reach the end," she says. After each death, Razzeca holds her own memorial by writing out something on the person to remember that person's unique story.

What she incorporates in her own life is her patients' zeal for life, choosing to embrace her relationship with her husband, with whom she lives in San Francisco, and the activities she enjoys. "Our society is always rushing and planning for the next thing," she says. "[My patients] learned to really live their lives."

One of the things Razzeca has taken up is hiking, as well as gardening in her corner of Camino Medical's parking lot. She gave up on a plot of tomatoes after they took over the whole garden and was relieved when just the bench was harmed during a spate of vandalism. "It's just become an obsession. I'd never gardened before this," she says.