She was the one with the word of comfort ready
Andy D'Luck was a multifaceted artist who combined drag performance with formal HIV/STI prevention work, teaching in elderly care centers and schools across São Paulo's East Zone. For five years, she was integral to Esquadrão das Drags, a collective merging art, prevention, and human rights advocacy through accessible, compassionate community engagement.
- Andy D'Luck died at 58 from pneumonia complications
- Member of Esquadrão das Drags for approximately five years
- Worked as a dance teacher in elderly care centers across São Paulo's East Zone
- Served as a prevention agent for approximately two years
- Died exactly one year after her mother's death
Andy D'Luck, 58, a drag queen, dance teacher, and HIV/STI prevention activist with the Esquadrão das Drags collective, died from pneumonia complications. She left a legacy of using art and care as tools for community education and social transformation.
Andy D'Luck died on a day when the city of São Paulo lost more than a performer. She was fifty-eight. The pneumonia that took her came with complications, the kind that don't announce themselves until it's too late, and by then the woman who had spent years teaching people how to live—how to dance, how to care for themselves, how to face difficulty without flinching—was gone.
She had trained as a dancer. That was the foundation. But Andy became known for something larger: the way she moved through the world with her hand already extended, already offering. She taught dance in elderly care centers across the East Zone of São Paulo, places where people came to remember their bodies could still move. She was a drag queen, yes, but the drag was never separate from the work. It was the work. The sequins and the heels and the transformation were the language she used to say things that mattered—things about prevention, about living with dignity, about how to talk to young people in schools without making them feel ashamed.
About five years before she died, Andy joined Esquadrão das Drags, a collective that had figured out something most public health campaigns never do: that prevention work doesn't have to be clinical. It can be joyful. It can be art. The group moved through São Paulo doing workshops, giving talks in schools, organizing community events. They made information about HIV and sexually transmitted infections accessible by making it beautiful, by making it come from a person who clearly cared. Andy was at all of it. She was the one you could count on to show up, to be present, to know what to say when someone was scared.
Dindry Buck, the artist who became Andy's drag mother years earlier—they had met in a dance class at the Oficina Cultural—remembered her as someone who embraced the work completely. "When the opportunity came to join Esquadrón, she took it," Dindry said. "It was the enchantment of her life." For about two years, Andy worked formally as a prevention agent. But the formal title never captured what she actually did. She was the person who showed up at your door. She was the one with the word of comfort ready. She was reliable in a way that made people feel less alone.
She had three siblings. She was the oldest. Exactly one year before she died, her mother had passed away—a coincidence so painful it seemed almost impossible. The family had barely finished grieving one loss when they had to face another.
What people who knew her keep returning to is a phrase she said often, something she repeated when life got difficult: "Tudo dá certo no final." Everything works out in the end. It's the kind of thing you say when you're trying to hold yourself and others together. It's the kind of thing that sounds like faith, or stubbornness, or maybe just the voice of someone who had learned that showing up and caring and doing the work was its own kind of answer.
Dindry's gratitude for her is eternal, she said. That's what remains now—the memory of someone who made a choice to use her art, her presence, her particular gift for making people feel seen, as a tool for keeping people alive. The memorial service details haven't been released yet. When they are, people will gather. They will remember the drag queen who was also a teacher, also an activist, also simply a friend who was always ready to help.
Notable Quotes
When the opportunity came to join Esquadrão, she took it. It was the enchantment of her life.— Dindry Buck, Andy's drag mother
Everything works out in the end.— Andy D'Luck's repeated phrase in the face of life's difficulties
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
What made Andy different from other prevention workers? Was it just that she was a drag queen, or was there something else?
It wasn't the drag itself—it was that she never separated the art from the care. She understood that people, especially young people, don't listen to lectures. They listen to people who are alive, who are joyful, who aren't afraid to be themselves. She was all three.
She worked formally as a prevention agent for only two years, but people talk about her like she was doing this work constantly. Why?
Because she was. The formal job was just a title. What she actually did was show up—to schools, to community events, to people's doors when they needed her. Prevention wasn't something she clocked in for. It was how she lived.
Dindry kept saying she was "pau para toda obra"—ready for anything. What does that mean in the context of prevention work?
It means she didn't wait to be asked. She saw what needed doing and she did it. If a workshop needed someone to make it welcoming, she was there. If a young person was scared, she knew how to talk to them. She was the glue.
She died exactly one year after her mother. Does that detail matter to the story, or is it just sad?
It matters because it shows the weight she was carrying. She was still grieving, still showing up for everyone else, still saying "everything works out in the end" even when her own life was breaking. That's the measure of who she was.
What happens to the Esquadrão now? Does her absence change what they can do?
They'll keep going—that's what collectives do. But they'll feel her absence. She was the presence. She was the one who made people feel held. That's not easy to replace.