07/29/2025
Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Supporters,
After serving as the Executive Director of Golden Rainbow for the past 11 years, I will be officially stepping down at the end of July to focus on my healing following major back injuries. While I have been considering retirement for some time, that doesn’t make this transition any easier—especially under such difficult and tragic circumstances.
This change comes at a critical moment for our community. Across the country, we are facing a hostile political climate determined to roll back decades of progress and critical funding for HIV programs. And here at home, the Clark County Social Services Office of HIV has recently made the devastating decision to award the majority of their Emergency Financial Assistance funds to a single large Florida-based medical corporation —cutting off support that Las Vegas-based grassroots organizations like Golden Rainbow have relied on for more than 35 years to serve our most vulnerable.
Over the past year, I have worked closely with our Board of Directors to prepare for this transition. In response to the shifting landscape, we’ve reimagined strategies to ensure Golden Rainbow can continue fulfilling its mission: providing housing and emergency support for people living with HIV. The Board will soon release a formal announcement regarding next steps and future leadership.
My own journey as an advocate began in 1985, when I volunteered with the San Diego AIDS Project during what was one of the darkest periods in our history. Most of my friends were either sick or dying. What started as volunteer hospice work quickly became a full-time battle—for resources, for recognition, for survival.
In my late twenties and early thirties, I became an AIDS activist, joining the CAEAR Coalition and advocating on Capitol Hill for sound public health policies and continued support through the Ryan White CARE Act. While I wasn’t a member of ACT UP, I wholeheartedly embraced their fearless, take-no-prisoners approach to demanding justice and care for people living with HIV. I marched, protested, and raised my voice alongside thousands of brave individuals, and I made a pact with my closest friends that we would fight until the end—for our lives or for a cure. Most of them didn’t survive.
Over the past 40 years, I’ve had the honor of helping establish peer-led HIV support organizations in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, of leading LGBTQ community centers in Palm Springs and Orange County, and serving as co-chair of the Ryan White Planning Councils in both Los Angeles County and Clark County, Nevada. I’ve served on more boards, task forces, and working groups than I can count—most recently, the Southern Nevada Community Health Center and Governor Sisolak’s HIV Modernization Task Force.
While many of these roles have involved navigating bureaucracy, at heart I’ve always been that angry young activist who refused to accept the unacceptable. I don’t suffer fools gladly. I’ve been called impatient, blunt, even abrasive—especially when speaking truth to power. But I’ve never strayed from the vow I made to my friends who died, and I have no regrets and no apologies.
Leading Golden Rainbow has been the honor of a lifetime. Together, we produced nine Ribbon of Life fundraising events, raised over $8 million from generous funders like The Helmsley Family Trust and Broadway Cares, and—most importantly—offered hope and dignity to thousands of individuals and families in Southern Nevada living with HIV. People who may have otherwise died alone on the streets. That is the work. That is the mission.
Golden Rainbow was founded by members of the Las Vegas entertainment community with one goal: to care for our own. I like to believe the original founders would be proud of how far we’ve come, of how I’ve nurtured their vision, and how relevant and vital it remains to this day.
To everyone who has supported me and believed in our mission: thank you. I am especially grateful to the board members who stood by me and got their hands dirty when needed—not for recognition, but because it was the right thing to do. And to my fabulous Dream Team—Joyce, Darnell, and Iria—thank you for carrying so much of the weight and heart of this work. Golden Rainbow is in excellent hands.
I’ll remain in an advisory role for the months ahead. But now, I must take time to focus on healing—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
With love, appreciation, and pride,
Gary Costa
Executive Director (Retiring), Golden Rainbow
