Fifty-one years old and married, Ron Crowder shouldn't visit prostitutes. But he does anyway. Late at night, he'll be driving past the boarded-up buildings and beer joints that dot Nashville's inner city when he sees a woman on a street corner. Surprised that he doesn't recognize her, among the many prostitutes he knows by name, he'll approach her and ask what she charges for sex.

Typically, it's as low as $20. A hustler all his life, Crowder knows that "when they're trying to get rock," they sell themselves cheap. It's a buyer's market. So he asks how much more it will cost not to wear a condom. It's just another $10, she tells him.

That's when Crowder tells the woman that, for a little extra cash, she would have been risking her life. For another 10 spot, he could have dealt her a slow, painful death—because Crowder is HIV positive. Today he lives with full-blown AIDS.

"It overtakes them," Crowder says of his unorthodox wake-up calls. "Sometimes, they'll break down and start crying. It works right then and there, but after a day or so, they probably go back to doing what they did before."

Crowder says this without passing judgment. A former heroin addict, he nursed a 20-year habit that shuffled him in and out of prison. When the needle couldn't ruin his life any other way, it got him infected with AIDS. The lost people he sees on the street, gambling their lives on most people's lunch money—any one of them could have been him. Now he cruises the city in the early morning hours, looking for its night people, passing along the lessons that almost killed him—and might yet.

"He's like a superhero," says Sam MacMaster, a professor at University of Tennessee's College of Social Work in Nashville, who invites Crowder to lecture his classes. "He flies around at night and saves people's lives."

Crowder is the director and founder of Street Works, a community-based HIV and AIDS prevention organization. With offices in two of Nashville's tougher housing projects, Street Works targets sex workers, drug addicts and anyone else likely to engage in high-risk behavior. It reaches people who either don't know how easy it is to get infected with the AIDS virus, or who just don't care. For those who already have HIV, Street Works will work with them to make sure they see a doctor, receive their medication or pay their rent. It's a tough, bleak mission that's defined not so much by victory but by managing the consequences of defeat.

Crowder and his staffers aren't the Salvation Army. They don't tell the drug-addled prostitute to go back to school. They don't help the dealer find a better way to make a living. They just find them: idling long after midnight, outside a beer joint in Edgehill or the dressing room of an Eighth Avenue strip club.

Once they make contact, the Street Works team just wants people to know they are there. They may hand out some condoms or bleach kits for needles. Or they may just say to drop by their offices, located in the projects, where people can come in and be tested. Or just talk.

Crowder and his staffers know the dangers well. One of Crowder's favorite employees served 10 years for second-degree murder. Others have struggled with drugs and lived in poverty. If they don't talk down to anyone, it's because they don't know how.

"We use a nonobtrusive approach," Crowder says. "We don't preach; we don't tell them you need to quit using drugs or you need to quit working the street. We just try to offer our services."

In any city, there are any number of valuable organizations that fight AIDS by raising awareness, offering counseling and focusing on prevention. What Street Works combats is the bleak, gritty isolation the disease fosters. Crowder ministers to the hopeless, the forgotten, the people who almost want to slip through the cracks. They're the people, Crowder says, who aren't likely to drop by a health clinic to volunteer for a test.

Throughout the country, Crowder and Street Works are recognized for fighting HIV in the trenches, with homegrown soldiers who know the perils of life on the street. Locally, people marvel at how Crowder taps into lonely, marginalized communities like a treasure hunter who can find things no one else can, and at least gets them thinking about HIV.

"Ron has the ability to reach people who don't have Social Security numbers, zip codes and phone numbers," says the Rev. Ed Sanders of the Metropolitan Interdenominational Church. "You have to have a tremendous level of savvy to reach these folks and interact with these folks. But he understands the pattern of their lives."

The son of a truck driver, Ron Crowder grew up in a small, crowded home on a street lined with shacks bordering Tennessee State University. His parents split up when he was young, and his father and stepmother raised him and nine other children. They looked up to their friends who lived in public housing, who to them were living the good life, with running water and gas heat. Crowder and his brothers and sisters chopped wood to keep the house warm and used an outhouse for a bathroom.

"We had nothing to look forward to," Crowder says. "It was always just surviving."

Crowder dropped out of Pearl High shortly before he was scheduled to graduate, and like many poor teenagers at that time, found himself in Vietnam, trapped in a conflict that he knew nothing about. Crowder was a rifleman, working as a perimeter guard while the other soldiers slept. He didn't see much combat, but instead spent a chunk of his one-year tour of duty in a military jail in South Vietnam. He doesn't remember how he landed behind bars, but it's a safe bet that drugs had something to do with it. Drugs would have something to do with a lot of what went wrong with Crowder's life, ever since he first started using with his fellow soldiers in 1971.

"We were sitting around getting high smoking weed and some guy said, 'Do you want some of this smack?' and I said 'I'll try anything so long as it's not heroin.' "

That remark had everyone laughing, so in an impulsive moment that altered the path of his life, Crowder decided to try heroin for the first time. He actually smoked it. At the time, heroin in Vietnam was nearly 90 percent pure. Naturally, within minutes, Crowder grew so nauseated that he prayed to God that if he would get him through this, he'd never try the stuff again. He broke his side of the bargain the next day.

"You're 18, you're away from home and you don't want to admit it, but you're scared to death," he says. "You're in a war zone and getting high was a way to escape that."

After receiving a general discharge, Crowder returned home to Nashville and checked into a VA hospital in Atlanta to seek treatment for his addiction. It didn't take. When he got home, he returned to his old ways. Living with his mother, he landed himself in jail within eight months after being caught stealing food stamps. He served 11 months and 29 days in prison, earning his GED. Soon after, when New York City was gripped by a budget crisis that threatened to plunge the five boroughs into bankruptcy, he flew there. Manic at the time from shooting heroin, Crowder thought he could help New York "fix its problems."

It's safe to say he set his sights a little too high. Over just 30 days, Crowder was arrested some five or six times, basically for not paying for things, including cab rides and restaurant meals. He spent his time "just tripping." Because the jail at the time was closed, Crowder was booked into New York's notorious Riker's Island Prison. When he got out, his grandmother bought him a ticket home, putting an end to his bid to save New York from its monetary woes.

From the time he left Vietnam, Crowder found himself on the wrong end of a pair of handcuffs nearly 200 times. He did several tours of prison duty, his longest stretch being an 18-month sentence for writing nearly $70,000 in bad checks. His crimes weren't violent; Crowder was just a crook, looking to get enough money to support his heroin and cocaine addiction. (At one point, he stopped using heroin altogether and switched to cocaine for the duration of his drug addiction.)

There were fleeting moments in Crowder's life when he appeared to have it together. He enrolled and eventually graduated from Tennessee State University with a business degree. He worked as a shoe salesman and even, for a short stint, as an accountant for the state. He never married but raised three children, even though only one was his. Drugs might have screwed up Crowder's life, but they didn't turn him into a thug.

Leslie Davis, who now works for Street Works part-time, knew Crowder when he was hooked on heroin and says that he wasn't much different than he is now. "He was outgoing and entertaining. Wherever he was hanging, people liked being with him," he says. "He was the nicest person you'd ever want to meet. But he was addicted."

And he could never shake that addiction, not for a day, for nearly 20 years. Even when he was in prison for 18 months, he still wanted to get high. It was all he could think about. The day he was released, he arranged to have a friend pick him up, drugs in hand. Together they shot cocaine in the prison parking lot.

Crowder's addiction became so indomitable that his mom helped him buy drugs, with his father's approval, just so they could keep tabs on him while he lived with her. He was disappearing for months at a time, leaving his parents in nearly constant fear about what had become of him. "My father told me, 'If you're going to use, I'd rather you use at home.' "

During 1987 and 1988, Crowder was, in his words, "all the way wild," staggering in and out of shooting galleries, the abandoned homes or dealer hovels where he shot cocaine with other addicts. He shot anywhere, with anybody. And he shared needles. It was the height of his addiction.

In 1991, a tool used to scrape tartar off of teeth slipped and pricked a dental hygienist on the leg. Because the hygienist worked at the Metro jail, she was mortified, and all the inmates she treated that day had to take an HIV test. One inmate tested positive, although the hygienist wasn't infected.

Meanwhile, Ron Crowder was smuggling coffee, cigarettes and weed into the jail and selling it at a tidy profit to other inmates. One day, without warning, Crowder was moved to a new facility. Placed above the door was a sign that read "Caution Body Fluids." He was that one inmate. When he found out the news, he was devastated but hardly surprised. He viewed it as a death sentence. That was 13 years ago.

Shortly after, Crowder began to clean up his life. He sought treatment for a month, but that wasn't what separated him from his habit. Crowder just grew tired of pumping drugs into his veins. As he tells it, it was really that simple. "My desire not to use was greater than my desire to use," he says, very matter-of-factly. "The whole time I was using from 1971 to 1991, I was either in jail, on my way to jail or on probation."

Crowder had simply had enough.

For the next few years, he took on any odd job to get by. He worked as a beer vendor for the Sounds, earning a short profile in the now-defunct Nashville Banner, which noticed his knack for rhyming sales pitches. "Have no fear," he'd say during a summer day at the ballpark. "The beer man is here."

He also started working for health agencies. He stayed clean. In 1997, he started Street Works to reach people like himself whom no one else bothered to reach. At the time, it was a one-person outfit. Today, Street Works employs nearly 10 people, has two offices and a $300,000 annual budget from the United Way and indirect federal grants. Meanwhile, he still sells beer at the Sounds games.

It's early Saturday morning, an hour or two past midnight, and Crowder has about six sleepy crack addicts sharing stories and laughing at his jokes outside a South Nashville market. Another Street Works employee with Crowder that evening, Leslie Davis, joyfully embraces a man he knew from their prison days. The man's name is "Spud, like a potato," he says, more than once.

Everywhere around them is quiet. The sidewalks are empty, the lights in the nearby housing project off. It's a mild evening, devoid of even a light wind to nudge the bottles and cigarettes left on the steps outside the market. The only sound comes from Crowder, Davis and their new friends, who exchange boasts and friendly taunts. The playful tone of the voices offers no clues that the reason for the visit is quite grave. After 30 minutes, Crowder and Davis leave, cutting up even as they get in the car. A few days later, a man was shot at that same market.

Nobody gets HIV from using crack. Not directly at least. But crack puts the libido on overdrive, prompting people to take extraordinary risks. They'll give up anything for it, including their own bodies.

"When you use crack, the main objective after it's gone is getting more," Davis says. "Most of the time people will go to any means necessary to get it."

There's a phrase among HIV organizations—"harm reduction"—a description for moderating the effects of someone's bad choices. So if someone is using heroin, you give the person clean needles to prevent them from spreading HIV. Or if someone is having risky sex, you encourage them to at least use a condom. Patrick Luther, the director of prevention education at Nashville CARES, the Microsoft of local HIV organizations, says that Street Works is effective by reaching out to people gradually.

"Let's say somebody comes in off the street because they've seen people from Street Works out or one of their friends has talked about them," he says. "They come in and say, 'I'm doing this and that,' and they say, 'Do you want a test?' They say no, but a few weeks later they come back in and take a test. That's what it's all about. Taking baby steps."

The key to Street Works' approach is that its employees can relate to just about any addict they come across. Rev. Sanders, of the Metropolitan Interdenominational Church, whose First Response Center tackles afflictions ranging from HIV to drugs to sexual violence, says that Ron Crowder's grassroots approach is rare. "In these communities, there is a lot of distrust of people who do social work. In many instances, there is a posture that is condescending or even patronizing," he says. "One thing I've learned with working with people who are disenfranchised is that there is a tremendous amount of sophistication to detect people who are disingenuous in trying to help them. But Ron has the posture and presence that allows him to establish instant rapport with people."

So do his staffers. It's almost midnight on Friday and Angela Crumpton-Smith is busy packing dozens of condoms into a knapsack in Street Works' new offices in the Tony Sudekum housing development. An hour or so later, she slips into the dressing room of an Eighth Avenue strip club, telling the dancers who she is and that her organization offers free HIV testing. She tells them, "You are your own responsibility." Then she hands them dozens of condoms, which they accept with gratitude.

Crumpton-Smith knows what it's like to live life on the fringe. She waged war with crack and cocaine when she was in her 20s. Born and bred in South Nashville near Edgehill, Crumpton-Smith shook her habit after a rare lucid moment when she recognized just how low her life had sunk.

"I can identify with the lady who hasn't had a shower in a couple of days or the lady who has kids at home and really wants to be a good mom but she can't because she's consumed by her addiction," she says. "I don't pass judgment on their lifestyle, and that makes them more receptive to me."

Street Works also tends to people already afflicted by HIV. Many people who are HIV positive also struggle with other problems, including poverty, homelessness and drug addiction. Their life is simply unmanageable. Street Works offers plans for them too.

Anyone can walk off the street into the organization's offices and, with a confirmed diagnosis, receive a plan for care. Caseworkers will research clients' social history to get a sense about what support if any they can count on from friends and family. They'll check to see whether there's a drug problem, and if so, refer them to treatment.

Later on, they may give them a bus pass or some money so they can make that month's rent. They may help them apply for federal assistance. As much as it can, Street Works tries to be a one-stop agency for people who aren't likely to write their congressman.

"We're dealing with folks who are very, very sick," says Brian Huskey, who works as a housing case manager for Street Works. "There is a pretty good network of services in Nashville, but if this network is Byzantine to a person like me who is reasonably well educated and reasonably intelligent, how would it appear to someone who is functionally challenged?"

On a late Thursday afternoon on the first warm day of the year, Ron Crowder is talking to a medical ethics class at Tennessee State University. The students think he's just another guest speaker. Crowder is tired, alternately standing and sitting on the desk in front of him. It's been a long day; he's attended a funeral, haggled with the phone company and dealt with a struggling employee. Later that night, he and his wife have about four hours worth of invoices to review. If he's lucky, he'll sleep a few hours.

Not much of a lecturer, Crowder offers an anecdote about walking into a bar, wearing a $1,500 suit and an expensive pair of gator skin shoes, and watching women's heads turn. "I'm a well-dressed man," he brags. (Actually, he concedes, he buys most of his clothes at Goodwill, but no one could ever tell.) Good-looking women at the bar approach him. They think he's a $500-an-hour lawyer. He has a quick wit and is charming. "But," he tells the class. "I have full-blown AIDS." No one asked him if he ever shared needles.

The students are shocked and seem uncomfortable, more so when no one knows what to say. To them, he's not the face of HIV. Finally, one student breaks the silence and suggests that women need to talk more with their partners about each other's sexual history before they sleep together. But Crowder expects more. "Let's get one thing straight," he says firmly. "We need to stop having sex on the first night."

At the end of class, the students thank Crowder for his talk. They joke around a little, and he flirts innocently with the attractive coeds. Later that evening, driving back to his office at the John Henry Hale Homes, he sees a prostitute he's come to know. She suspects she's HIV positive, but she won't come in for a test. He doesn't know if she ever will. But he still honks his horn and shouts hello. She smiles right back at him.