FRIENDS PAY TRIBUTE TO BROWNIE MARY'S LIFE

Brownie Mary, whose indomitable spirit and baked goods spiked with marijuana
endeared her to the hundreds of AIDS patients she called her "kids," was
honored Saturday night with a candlelight vigil in the Castro.

About 300 people jammed Castro Street off 18th and listened to 90 minutes of
Brownie Mary stories from some of the people who knew her best. Some in the
crowd held candles. Some carried a framed photograph of her wearing a lei of
faux marijuana leaves and an innocent smile.

And some passed joints.

She would have loved it.

"I figure right now she's making a deal with God," Dennis Peron, her partner
in the medical marijuana movement, told the crowd. "'If you let me in, I'll
make you a dozen brownies on the house.'"

Brownie Mary, whose real name was Mary Jane Rathbun, died April 10 at the
age of 77 after nearly two decades of social activism.

She earned her moniker in the early 1980s, shortly after her first of three
arrests, for the "magically delicious" brownies she would bring to AIDS
patients on Ward 86 of San Francisco General Hospital.

In order to pay for her legal defense after the first arrest, Brownie Mary
was forced to sell all her belongings -- including the kitchen table where
she mixed her secret recipe.

But she not only continued to serve the brownies to AIDS patients to help
relieve their pain and nausea, she became a leader in the medicinal
marijuana movement, helping put Proposition 215 before California voters.
With Peron, she founded the now-defunct San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club.

Only arthritis and her frail health stopped her from helping others. She
baked her last brownies in the mid-1990s.

As speakers told tales about Rathbun -- including fond memories of her
sailor's mouth and penchant for polyester pantsuits -- onlookers milled
around a shrine with posted photographs and newspaper articles. Several
lilies graced the memorial. Someone left a brownie in aluminum foil.

"Brownie Mary was my friend," San Francisco District Attorney Terence
Hallinan told the crowd while standing on the back of a red pickup truck
next to a three-foot marijuana plant.

"Brownie Mary was a hero. She will one day be remembered as the Florence
Nightingale of the medical marijuana movement."

Hallinan then pledged that as long as he remained DA, "Nobody is going to
prosecute in the city and county of San Francisco anyone who uses and
cultivates marijuana with a legitimate doctor's recommendation."

As the crowd erupted into cheers and applause, one onlooker, Tom O'Malley,
38, turned to a friend and grinned.

"Only in San Francisco," he said, "would the DA come to a pot rally."

"For a long time, nobody knew what AIDS was back in the beginning of the
'80s, and she was going into situations where we weren't really sure how
AIDS was transmitted," said Rathbun's friend Amy Casey.

"She was just right in there, going from bedside to bedside, giving her
brownies." The Associated Press contributed to this report.