Rebekka Armstrong grew up in a small California desert town three hours north of Los Angeles. As tomboy growing up, she preferred riding Motorcycle racing to playing with dolls or picking out a new school dress and was stacking up trophies by the age of 14. At the age of 18, she aspired to become a Playboy Playmate as she had seen in copies of the magazines she had found under Grandpa's bed.
A friend of the family, Charles Napier passed her pictures onto Hugh Hefner and against all odds Rebekka was chosen out of hundreds of thousand young women to become a centerfold. Miss September 86 became an immediate fixture in to star studded world of Hollywood, it seemed a time when nothing could harm her. Movie deals were beginning to come for her as well as commercials and massive amounts of modeling. Her sunny disposition and enthusiastic spirit brought her all she could desire.
But as time passed Rebekka began to suspect that there was something amiss as she became fatigued easily as well as being plagued with a general feeling of malaise. She went to the Doctor for a battery of tests. On a whim, she also asked to be tested for HIV, never once thinking that the test may come back positive. Upon her return from a modeling assignment in Mexico, there was a message from her Doctors office. She returned the call to find that HIV test had come back positive. Needless to say, this stigma is a career destroyer in the industry, so Rebekka kept her infection a secret as the affects of the virus ravaged her body and her life.
After a period of hiding the effects of the disease and the destructive effect of having to keep such a horrible secret, Rebekka decided to go public with her disease in 1994 in a cover story for the magazine, The Advocate. Instead of resigning herself to hiding in the shadow of AIDS, Rebekka has chosen to dedicate herself to preventing others from making the mistakes of unsafe sex or drug use. Hugh Hefner and the Playboy Foundation also arranged for grants to be made available to Rebekka as part of a College Campus Safer Sex education program.
Rebekka has become a outspoken activist involved in the struggle to bring awareness to this dilemma and to fight for progress in finding better medications and treatment. She still tours the country extensively, taking part in educational programs and teaching people about the reality of AIDS and how to prevent it.
Rebekka currently lives in Los Angeles. Although she has had the virus for about 17 years, she is in excellent health. Due to new medications and a super healthy lifestyle Rebekka's viral load is undetectable and her T-Cell count is normal (over 500). She remains a working Playboy Playmate representing the organization in it's many events and is writing two books at this time, one an autobiography, the other a cookbook with many of her wonderful recipes combined with health and workout tips.
Website: http://rebekkaonline.com/
