He's the Latino Diabetes Assn.'s keeper of the flame

Randy Mu?oz glided among the guests, greeting and hugging them. They were in a posh club 54 floors above Los Angeles, and the windows looked out to a shimmering vista of lighted streets. They swirled cocktails, dined on shrimp and gyoza, soaked up a Latin trio and traded pleasantries.

Then Mu?oz, called on to speak, riled the serenity with a jolt of emotion.

"How many of you guys have diabetes in your families? OK. Keep those hands up and look around. Look around. That's disgusting. Seriously. That's sad," Mu?oz said.

"It's no wonder our kids are 5 feet tall and 6 feet wide now because, you know, they have carte blanche, the McDonald's and the Carl's Jr.'s that just come into our low-income communities and set up shop and nobody's watching them."

Mu?oz was angry. He is often incensed. One out of eight Latino adults in Los Angeles County has been diagnosed with diabetes, a rate more than two times higher than for white adults, according to a 2007 survey taken for the Department of Public Health. Poor, Spanish-speaking Latinos are particularly vulnerable because they are much less likely to have access to information about the disease, decent medical care and healthy foods.

"We need your help, guys. So dig in those deep pockets that I know you've got and that your friends have and help us out, help us help the community," said Mu?oz, vice chairman of the nonprofit Latino Diabetes Assn.

For the last seven years, typically volunteering more than 20 hours a week, Mu?oz has struggled to put the Latino Diabetes Assn. on a solid financial footing. He had a receptive audience at the February fundraiser at the City Club, but the evening drew only about three dozen people. Mu?oz initially imagined he would raise $50,000, then trimmed his hopes to $25,000. The final tally was $9,000.

Though often disheartened, Mu?oz keeps plugging. "I'm the kind of guy that, till the credits are going up, thinks the movie is going to get better," he said. "This is my calling."

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Mu?oz, 46, grew up in Estrada Courts, a public housing development in Boyle Heights, and dropped out of high school. "The dean told me 'I can hardly wait for you to turn 18 so you can go to the joint,' " he recalled.

He eventually earned a high school diploma and an associate's degree. He worked in the garment industry for 14 years before landing a job with the county's Community and Senior Services Department.

In 1994, Mu?oz's 10-year-old niece, Amber Arevalo, who was overweight, found out she was diabetic. "We had no idea of how serious it was," he said. "It's really a misunderstood disease."

Diabetes is caused when the body fails to make enough insulin or respond to it and is then unable to absorb sugar from the bloodstream, which can lead to severe complications. The most common form can often be controlled by proper diet and exercise.

As Arevalo grew up, she suffered heart attacks and strokes. She had part of a finger amputated. She wore a colostomy bag and went to dialysis three times a week. She lost her sight and was eventually bedridden. And she became Mu?oz's inspiration to fight diabetes.

"I was extremely, extremely close to my niece," he said. "I wanted to prevent more Ambers."

His mother, a brother and a nephew also have diabetes. "It's ridiculous," he said. "They just announced officially that it is an epidemic. Ta-da! We knew that."

Last year, Mu?oz found out he was at risk of developing diabetes. He received a blood report with an elevated sugar level. Although he had insisted on being tested every year, he said, the office found no record that he had been. The experience underscored the disregard Mu?oz believes Latinos often face.

"I was really angry when I found out," he said. "Here I am, I'm a big advocate on it. What about people who don't speak English or are seniors? I'm thinking: No wonder we have a diabetes epidemic."

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When Mu?oz began working with the Latino Diabetes Assn., it was an idea on paper. The plan was to go into some of the county's poorest communities and provide free classes in Spanish on yoga, healthy cooking, preventing diabetes and how to live with it.

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