Supershero: Pristeen Rickett

Pristeen Rickett

Inducted into the Love Superhero Hall of Gratitude in September 2020 during the Disease Investigator Specialist (DIS) Summit for California. Pristeen was nominated by her peers as the Orange County DIS Supershero.

Ms. Pristeen Rickett began working for the state of California STD Control Branch in 2001 as an Interstate Communication Control Record Clerk. She became a Disease intervention Specialist (DIS) in 2010. In 2014, she continued her DIS career with the Orange County Health Care Agency. She was promoted to DIS supervisor in 2016 where she continues until today

As a DIS for the OC Health Care Agency, at the end of 2014, she conducted the interview of a newly diagnosed gonorrhea/acute HIV co-infected adult film industry performer. She elicited 15 sexual contacts that also worked as performers in addition to five non-performers. The investigations spanned seven states including California and four foreign countries. This resulted in a collaboration among the California Department of Health (STD Control Branch/Office of AIDS), surrounding local health jurisdictions and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2016 an article in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report “Occupational HIV Transmission Among Male Adult Film Performers-Multiple States” was published detailing the efforts. Four new HIV infections, all highly genetically related, indicated a transmission cluster. Two other previously HIV positive performers were also identified thought they could not be located.

To this day Pristeen’s efforts in this case highlight the important work that DIS perform in their day-to-day activities in protecting the health of all Californians. It is for this that we honor Pristeen as a DIS public health superhero.

About the Love Superhero Hall of Gratitude:

“The plain fact is that the world does not need more successful people, but it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane.” David OrrI deeply admire those who "live well in their places." The ordinary and the unsung who offer to the world the very best parts of themselves without expectation.This is a beautiful expression of love in her calm, persistent, generous manner - offering a ripple of change (a metamorphosis) to the world.

Inductees to the Love Superhero Hall of Gratitude are caped in recognition of their contributions to a love-filled world.