Twenty years after the city of New York turned its back on Tracy Allen Lee, the FDNY emergency medical technician was honored Monday for the selfless act that ultimately took her life.
In November of 1989, Lee was barely two years into her career when she treated a patient with Aids while responding to a call.
She accidentally suffered a cut to her thumb which made contact with the blood of her patient.
It would be nearly five years later when she tested positive for HIV, becoming the first EMT worker in the city to contract the HIV virus while on the job. In 1997, she succumbed to the disease dying at the age of 34. She spent her final years in a legal fight against the city which denied her request to classify her illness as a “line-of-duty” injury.