In photographs, she looks like a scout leader about to ask if you’ve had anything to eat today. It takes a moment to see that often, just out of focus, her fingers are holding a joint and her vest is covered in risque pins, including an embroidered cannabis leaf.

Mary Jane Rathbun, jailed thrice and the reason for California’s groundbreaking action on medical cannabis, was better known as Brownie Mary, the patron saint of AIDS patients. More than twenty years after her death, it’s not hard to understand why this grandmotherly figure remains one of San Francisco’s most beloved activists.

She’s been called the Florence Nightingale of HIV/AIDS. She was famous for bringing her magic brownies to gay men and others suffering from wasting syndrome, a name for the deleterious effects on appetite caused by the stigmatized retrovirus.

Much like Nightingale’s work on hygiene and compassionate care, Brownie Mary’s legacy lives on in the recipes and procedures still used today in medicinal edible production.

Brownie Mary helped save my life from AIDS wasting in 1996. She was adorable! We met at Dennis Peron's Cannabis Cultivators' Club on Market Street in San Francisco, and when she came around you knew you were in for a blessing. [Image: Brownie Mary Rathbun and Dennis Peron]

Her baked goods were freaking atmospheric. Because of her and Dennis and John Taylor's Flower Market and a lot of good folks, I got enough weight back to get on the brand-new HIV drugs just under the wire, and 25 years later I'm still here to write about it and say thanks.

In 1998, the Cannabis Cultivators' Club asked me to play Brownie Mary on stage to open her birthday celebration at the Club - as it turned out, her final birthday. I worked up a solo flute take to The Association's "Along Comes Mary" and ripped TF out of it. She lit up the stage like she lit up our hearts.

Curious emperor penguins investigate a wildlife camera