For millions of television viewers, Paul Michael Glaser will forever be Detective Dave Starsky — one half of the charismatic crime-fighting duo at the center of the 1970s hit Starsky & Hutch.
Behind the fame, however, Glaser’s family endured a tragedy far more devastating than anything audiences saw on television.
His first wife, Elizabeth Glaser, contracted HIV through a contaminated blood transfusion while giving birth to their daughter Ariel in 1981. Unaware she had been infected, Elizabeth later transmitted HIV to both of her children: Ariel through breastfeeding and her son Jake before he was born. EGPAF
Ariel died from AIDS-related illness in 1988 at only seven years old.
Elizabeth died in 1994.
But Jake survived.
Now 41 years old, Jake Glaser has lived for more than four decades with HIV and has devoted much of his adult life to carrying forward the extraordinary legacy his mother created while desperately trying to save her children. IMDb
His story isn’t simply about surviving a disease that once seemed certain to take his life.
It’s about what his family did when they discovered that children like Jake had essentially been forgotten during the earliest years of the AIDS epidemic.
It Began With the Birth of Ariel
Paul Michael Glaser married Elizabeth Meyer in 1980.
Elizabeth wasn’t a Hollywood star. She had worked as a teacher, while Paul had become internationally recognizable through Starsky & Hutch.
The following year, the couple prepared to welcome their first child.
Their daughter, Ariel, was born in August 1981.
But Elizabeth suffered severe hemorrhaging during childbirth and required an emergency blood transfusion.
The transfusion saved her life.
It also unknowingly exposed her to HIV.
This was the earliest period of the AIDS epidemic, before effective screening of the blood supply had been introduced. Elizabeth had no idea the blood she received carried the virus. EGPAF
She returned home believing the crisis was over.
In reality, the family’s ordeal had only begun.
Elizabeth Unknowingly Passed HIV to Ariel
Because Elizabeth didn’t know she was HIV-positive, she breastfed Ariel.
The virus was transmitted to her daughter.
At first, nobody knew.
Ariel grew into a little girl remembered by her family for her creativity and love of drawing.
But before her fourth birthday, she began experiencing unexplained health problems.
Her condition worsened.
Eventually, in 1986, doctors confirmed the devastating diagnosis: Ariel was HIV-positive. EGPAF
The family was stunned.
Then doctors tested the rest of them.
The results revealed something even more terrifying.
Elizabeth was HIV-positive.
And so was Jake.
Paul was not infected. Wikipedia
Jake Had Been Born With HIV
Jake Glaser was born on October 25, 1984.
By then, Elizabeth had unknowingly been living with HIV for approximately three years.
Jake contracted the virus in utero. EGPAF
Suddenly Paul and Elizabeth were confronting the possibility of losing both of their children.
And in the mid-1980s, an HIV diagnosis was profoundly different from what it can mean today.
Effective combination antiretroviral therapy did not yet exist.
The disease was surrounded by fear, misinformation and enormous stigma.
For children, the situation was even worse.
There Was Almost Nothing for Children Like Ariel and Jake
As the Glasers searched for treatment, they encountered an astonishing problem.
Children were largely absent from HIV drug research.
Medicines being developed and tested for adults weren’t necessarily available or properly studied for pediatric patients.
The family couldn’t simply accept that.
Elizabeth became determined to change it.
She later summed up her motivation with a powerful idea: saving her own family meant trying to change the world around them. EGPAF
But time was running out for Ariel.
Ariel Died at Just Seven
In 1988, Ariel died from AIDS-related illness.
She was only seven years old. EGPAF
Her death devastated the family.
But Elizabeth turned that grief into action.
She knew Jake was still alive.
And she feared that without pediatric HIV research, her son could face the same fate as his sister.
Together with her friends Susan DeLaurentis and Susie Zeegen, Elizabeth helped establish what became the Pediatric AIDS Foundation.
It would later be renamed the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation in her honor.
Its mission was intensely personal:
Give children with HIV a chance to live.
Elizabeth Became a National AIDS Activist
Elizabeth transformed from a mother desperately searching for treatment into one of America’s most prominent advocates for children affected by HIV/AIDS.
She testified before Congress.
She pushed pharmaceutical companies and government agencies to pay attention to pediatric HIV.
She raised money for research.
And she spoke publicly about something many families were terrified to discuss.
Her most famous national moment came during the 1992 Democratic National Convention, where she spoke about her family’s experience and demanded stronger action against AIDS.
Her willingness to identify herself publicly was significant.
HIV stigma in the late 1980s and early 1990s could be brutal.
Elizabeth put her family’s story in front of the world anyway.
Because Jake was still alive.
She Was Fighting for Her Son
The foundation’s own history makes the connection explicit.
After Ariel’s death, Elizabeth feared Jake’s life was also in danger and intensified her efforts to fund pediatric HIV/AIDS research. EGPAF
Jake was growing up with a virus that had already taken his sister.
And his mother knew that it could eventually take her too.
For a young boy, that was an unimaginable reality.
Then Jake Lost His Mother
Elizabeth Glaser died on December 3, 1994, from AIDS-related complications.
She was 47.
Jake was only 10. Wikipedia
In just six years, he had lost both his older sister and his mother to the same disease he was living with himself.
The question hanging over his childhood was unavoidable:
Would Jake be next?
At the time, nobody could confidently promise otherwise.
Doctors Once Didn’t Expect Him to Live Long
Jake later described growing up HIV-positive as extraordinarily difficult.
At one point, he said, nobody was sure he would survive beyond about age 10.
But he did.
Ten became 20.
Twenty became 30.
Then 40.
In a letter shared years later, Jake reflected on how dramatically he had exceeded those early expectations. Global Citizen
Today, he is approaching his 42nd birthday.
For a child born with HIV in 1984, his adulthood represents a remarkable change in what became medically possible.
Jake’s Biology May Also Have Helped Him
Jake’s survival story attracted scientific interest for another reason.
He has discussed having a genetic variation connected with the CCR5 receptor, which plays an important role in the way many strains of HIV enter immune cells.
Earlier reporting explored whether this inherited biological factor helped slow the progression of his infection.
In a 2008 CBS report, Jake described it affectionately as his “beautiful gene.” CBS News
That doesn’t mean genetics alone explains his entire health history, nor does his individual experience represent what happens to everyone living with HIV.
But it became another remarkable element of his story.
Paul Michael Glaser Remained HIV-Negative
Throughout the family’s ordeal, Paul Michael Glaser remained HIV-negative. Los Angeles Times
He watched his daughter die.
Then his wife.
And continued raising the son who was living with the same virus.
For audiences who knew him primarily as Starsky, the reality of Glaser’s private life was difficult to reconcile with his television image.
Behind the famous actor was a father who had watched AIDS transform his entire family.
Paul Eventually Remarried
After Elizabeth’s death, Paul eventually rebuilt parts of his personal life.
He married producer Tracy Barone in 1996.
Jake was still young at the time, and Barone adopted him. Paul and Tracy later welcomed daughter Zoe. Wikipedia
The marriage eventually ended.
But Jake continued growing into adulthood — something his mother had fought desperately to make possible.
He Could Have Walked Away From HIV Advocacy
Once Jake reached adulthood, he could easily have decided that he’d spent enough of his life defined by HIV.
After all, he never chose to become an activist.
He never chose the diagnosis.
He never chose to have his family’s private medical history become internationally known.
But instead of running from his mother’s mission, Jake embraced much of it.
He became an ambassador for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.
He began speaking to young people.
He worked to challenge stigma.
And he told the story his mother was no longer alive to tell herself. EGPAF
His Message Became About the Person, Not the Virus
Jake has emphasized a simple principle in his advocacy:
A person should come before their HIV status.
He has spoken in classrooms and to young people about the stigma that continues to surround HIV, arguing that the diagnosis should be understood as one circumstance in a person’s life rather than their entire identity. EGPAF
It’s an especially powerful message coming from someone whose childhood was defined publicly by that diagnosis.
For years, he was “the child with HIV.”
Today, he’s an adult who happens to live with HIV.
Those are very different identities.
He Has Also Spoken About Survivor’s Guilt
Living when your mother and sister died can create complicated emotions.
Jake has publicly discussed experiencing survivor’s guilt.
His survival represented everything Elizabeth fought for.
But it also meant growing older without two of the people closest to him.
That emotional contradiction has remained part of his life.
He survived.
His sister didn’t.
His mother didn’t.
And eventually he had to find a way to make survival mean something beyond simply being the person left behind.
His Mother’s Foundation Became Bigger Than Their Family
What Elizabeth created in response to her family’s crisis ultimately reached far beyond Jake.
The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation grew into a major global organization dedicated to preventing pediatric HIV and helping mothers, children and families affected by the virus.
The foundation says its work has reached millions of women with HIV testing, counseling, prevention and treatment services. EGPAF
What began with one terrified mother trying to save her children became an international effort.
Elizabeth couldn’t save Ariel.
She couldn’t save herself.
But her work helped transform the possibilities for countless other families.
And Jake lived long enough to see that happen.
Ariel Is Still Part of the Foundation
Even Ariel’s childhood artwork became part of the organization’s identity.
In 1988, she painted her vision of the world as a garden surrounded by love and sunshine.
Her artwork inspired the foundation’s logo. EGPAF
That means both women Jake lost remain present in the organization.
Elizabeth through its name.
Ariel through its visual identity.
And Jake through the work he continues to do.
RARE PHOTOS Show Jake Today
For viewers who remember photographs of Paul holding his little boy, seeing Jake as an adult can be striking.
The child once facing an uncertain future is now 41.
He has built a life.
He has worked in advocacy.
He has spoken openly about HIV.
He has helped preserve his mother’s legacy.
And, perhaps most importantly, he grew older.
That sounds ordinary.
For Jake Glaser, it once seemed anything but.
HIV Is Not the Same Diagnosis It Was in the 1980s
Jake’s story also spans one of the most dramatic transformations in modern medicine.
When his family discovered their diagnoses, AIDS was widely feared as a death sentence.
Today, effective antiretroviral treatment allows many people living with HIV to live long lives, and people who achieve and maintain an undetectable viral load do not sexually transmit HIV.
That progress doesn’t erase what happened to families like the Glasers.
In fact, it makes their history even more important.
People fought for that progress.
Elizabeth was one of them.
Paul Lost a Daughter and a Wife — But His Son Survived
There is something profoundly bittersweet about looking at the Glaser family photographs today.
Ariel’s childhood ended far too soon.
Elizabeth never got to see what her foundation would become.
Paul lived through both losses.
And Jake — the little boy everyone feared might be next — reached his 40s.
He turns 42 on October 25, 2026. IMDb
His survival doesn’t erase the tragedy.
But it changed the ending.
His Mother’s Fight Wasn’t in Vain
Elizabeth once faced an impossible reality.
She couldn’t change the contaminated transfusion she’d received.
She couldn’t undo transmitting HIV to her children before she even knew she had it.
She couldn’t bring Ariel back.
What she could do was fight for Jake.
And then fight for every other child like him.
More than three decades after Elizabeth’s death, Jake is still here.
The foundation carrying her name is still working.
Ariel’s artwork is still remembered.
And the little boy whose future once looked heartbreakingly uncertain has become a living connection between the darkest years of the AIDS epidemic and the medical progress that followed.
RARE PHOTOS of Jake Glaser today therefore reveal much more than what Paul Michael Glaser’s son looks like as an adult.
They show something his mother spent the final years of her life fighting to make possible:
her son grew up. EGPAF
For more rare glimpses into the lives of stars and their families, check out these rare photos of Elvis Presley’s twin granddaughters, Finley and Harper, at 17 or see how Sophia Loren looks at 92 and Kim Novak at 93 today.
