In just a few months, on many a silver screen, we will have our fill of superheroes. A Spiderman who will fly through the sky on a spiderweb, a Greek demigod, Hercules, who will swing his mighty sword. All men of brawn, all men of fantastic abilities. We love, and yes, we need our heroes. But in everyday life, not just on screen, heroes are alive and well. Some are much quieter and have no need of a costume, but mind you, their roar is just as strong and their spirits just as fierce.
One such man is Augie Nieto. You may not know him by name, but you know of his empire, Lifecycle, one which he has built from scratch. And once you hear his story, you will never forget his name again. He is a hero. His armor of choice? His written words. His brawn? His mind, while his archenemy is advanced amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
For most of us, getting out of bed first thing in the morning is a challenge. But for Augie, mornings are an ordeal made up of painstaking moments, one that can take up to three hours. With three caretakers and his wife, Lynne, by his side, Augie needs to shower, be fed, shaved, clothed and ventilated through a tube in his throat. The man who once ran marathons is now completely dependent on others.
But before all this happened, there was Augie, a young man from Anaheim, California who played football at Loara High School. Born in 1958, Augie was the son of a field foreman while his mother, an Italian-American, with family from the northern regions of Italy near Milan, was busy raising the children and battling her own demons of severe mental illness. When Augie was just seventeen, his mother took her own life. “I believe that the unfortunate fact that my mom was ill and left life too early, prepared me for future challenges and set-backs,” Augie wrote in an email.
The loss, though devastating, did not stop him. Augie went on to college at Claremont College, and it was there that he began to build his fitness corporation. He started with a modest gym, but when he noticed that the gym lacked a female clientele, he searched for a solution. The solution came when he was in San Diego, and Augie caught sight of the “Lifecyle,” a computerized stationary bike that women loved to use in order to stay in shape.
Sensing that this bike would become an industry game changer, Augie and his business partner, Scott McFarlane, a college roommate, tried to sell the bikes. Although sales were at first dismal, Augie adjusted his strategy by providing the bikes to gym managers to use for free. The idea worked and soon interest grew. LifeCycle went on to become a multimillion dollar global industry.
With his career soaring, Augie married his high school sweetheart, Lynne. “Not many people can say that their spouse would do what Lynne has done for me over the past nine years. I was drafted into ALS, Lynne enlisted.” For a while, life was bliss. He was the golden boy— the pinnacle of success and health.
And then in 2004, Augie felt a disturbing pain in his lumbar region. Dismissing the discomfort on overexertion, Augie went on with his life. Within that year, however, Augie’s speech had slowed and perhaps the most troubling, he could no longer reach across his body to shave both sides of his cheek. Soon, he would lose his ability to move, speak and breathe independently. In 2005, Augie was diagnosed with ALS.
ALS is a neurological disease that affects the nerve cells and causes a degeneration of motor neurons. The brain’s inability to control movements ceases while even the ability to breathe independently is curtailed.
With ALS, ironically, the sensory nerves remain intact and functional. Sensations such as touch and pain are both normally perceived. A simple itch becomes a challenge. In Augie’s autobiographical book, Augie’s Quest, he chronicles his journey through ALS with unabated honesty. At his lowest point, he tried to take his own life. “Those were my darkest days. After going through that experience, I made a decision to celebrate what I can do, instead of focusing on what I can’t do.
There is much to celebrate these days and what Augie can do has been nothing short of miraculous. Using his business skills, Augie founded, “Augie’s Quest,” a nonprofit foundation with its singular goal to raise money for ALS research; today, his charity has raised over $40 million dollars. Augie too is hopeful of recent medical advances: “I believe that where we are with ALS right now, is similar to the turning point we saw with MS in the 90s.”
He himself continues to defy medical experts. Currently, he lives in Orange County with a view overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and works out by doing “leg presses and calf raises on machines designed specifically for my needs by my friends at Hammer Strength, Life Fitness and Octane.” Augie’s next goal is to walk down the aisle with his daughter on July 5th.
Today, a few months before that wedding, Augie remains a beam of light that radiates to the world and he does all this from his chair. When asked what is the one message he would like to give to the world, Augie responds while using his feet to type his words, “I hope that by living with ALS in the public and showing people I didn’t let it end me, I’m providing hope for a group of people who really didn’t have that before. My message is simply this—Never give up.”
For more information, go to www.augiesquest.org
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