Thursday, September 13, 2012

I'm Famous!

Check out this video in which Nascar honors the founder of the Autism Academy (my employer) for her work getting insurance companies to provide therapy benefits for children with autism. When she got this legislation ("Ryan's Law") passed in South Carolina, she started working with lawmakers across the country. Ryan's Law has been passed in 31 other states, which is amazing! The video was shot on location at the Autism Academy and you can see Yours Truly hard at work 40 seconds in.

If you are so moved, please vote for Lorri. She is one of four finalists and has already been awarded $25,000 to benefit the school. If we won the grand prize, $100,000 would go to provide scholarships.

Yesterday, I was working with a child who is typically the picture of happiness. But something happened while playing catch, and his eyes got all teary and he asked for a hug. He doesn't have the verbal skills yet to tell me exactly what upset him, but I'm working with him so that one day he'll be able to tell people how he feels and why, and be able to speak for himself instead of having to hope that we guess right about what the problem is. I feel incredibly blessed to work there and to be able to help these kids succeed.

If you want to support us, you can vote every day! If you feel REALLY strongly about supporting Autism Academy, you can vote once per email address as well. Last year, the total number of votes was 21,000, and voting is open for about 60 days. If 120 people vote every day, we can totally win this!

I won't be posting here about this again, but you can join the Autism Academy loves NASCAR FB page if you would like to get reminders to vote. I don't want to spam people, but I forget about things all the time and need a little prompt...


Glutton for Punishment?