Vincent Crisostomo

Vincent Crisostomo, a gay Chamorro activist, was born in 1961 in Tachikawa, Japan and is a native of Guam. Having lived in Guam, LA and New York, Vincent primarily considers San Francisco to be his home community. In 1991, Vincent and his partner Jesse were of the first fifty couples to register as domestic partners in San Francisco when same-sex marriage was briefly legalized. Jesse passed away that same year due to AIDS-related complications, which spurred Vincent to become involved and active with his community.

Vincent has been living with HIV since 1987 and became the first person to be publicly out as living with HIV in the Pacific Islands when he came out on World AIDS Day 1992 in Guam. Vincent has worked with the Asian AIDS Project, the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance (GAPA) Community HIV Project, the Living Well Project, and the API Wellness Center. In 2000, he returned to Guam to become the Executive Director of the Coral Life Foundation, which was the first community-based organization that was funded to do AIDS work in the Pacific. During that time, he quadrupled the budget for AIDS to $800,000. Today, Vincent continues to work on HIV/AIDS in the Bay Area.