Ride For Life: Grandfather's ALS death gives family a mission

(Brandon Butler is a sixth-grader in the classroom of Krissi McCollum at Vista Christian School)

I can't remember when I wasn't volunteering for the ALS Association.

My grandfather died from this disease five years before I was born. My mom was sad that no one knew what caused it or how to cure it. She became a volunteer when we lived in Orange County. She thought she was signing up, but our whole family ended up involved. I started helping, too. At 6 years old, I was stuffing envelopes.

ALS stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Most people know it as Lou Gehrig's disease. It's a muscular disease that kills people within three years from when they find out they have it. The disease shuts down people's muscles one by one. They can't walk, talk or swallow. Eventually their lungs stop moving, and they die.

What is exciting about volunteering for the association is that people don't have to die a horrible way. By raising money and telling others, we provide services to help them live better.

When my family moved to Vista two years ago, we had to stop helping because there wasn't a chapter in San Diego. My mom just did stuff with us kids.

One day, I met a lady at my Little League field. I was wearing an ALS T-shirt.

She asked me how I knew about ALS and told me her mother-in-law had just been diagnosed. I got her phone number and gave it to my mom. We tried to help this lady, but she died real quick. It was real sad.

My family talked it over and we decided to start an ALS Association chapter. I went with my mom to collect equipment to loan like hospital beds and wheelchairs. We put our phone number in the newspaper, and people started calling for help.

We found a lot more people with ALS, some right here in Vista. And we found people to help us help them. So now my family aren't the only volunteers anymore.

We had a walkathon last October and raised money, so now we have a real office for all the equipment. People work there, too.

The patient hot line phone still rings at our house, so I have to be extra polite when answering the phone.

This January, I pushed a man with ALS in his wheelchair through the San Diego Marathon in Carlsbad. I was only supposed to push one mile, but my mom let me push across the finish line. It was exciting. Everybody was crying. We were on TV.

My mom likes to say that I am the reason we started an ALS chapter here by talking to that one lady. But I know that's not exactly true. My whole family helped. Dad says he doesn't mind the time we spend helping people with ALS, because it would be time we would have spent with our grandpa if he hadn't died.