Ruth Marie Brinker (May 1, 1922 – August 8, 2011) was an American AIDS activist and founder of the nonprofit, Project Open Hand. She began her activism in 1985 by providing food and meals to home-bound AIDS patients in San Francisco who were too ill cook or shop. Brinker was born Ruth Marie Appel on May 1, 1922, in Hartford, South Dakota. She moved to San Francisco, California, during the mid-1950s, where she married her husband, Jack Brinker, in 1957. They had two daughters, Lisa and Sara, but later divorced in 1965.