My son, Nathan Remmert, suffered a spinal cord injury on April 4, 2004. He has a C5-C6 injury and is quadriplegic. Nate was the athlete in our family -- our hockey player, lacrosse player, and runner. You name it. Nate moved to Carlsbad, California to attend Project Walk Spinal Cord Injury Recovery Center. It is an intensive exercise program with a goal of creating new nerve pathways & helping paralyzed people walk again. While not everyone walks, everyone gets stronger and healthier. This program is not covered by most insurances & the clients (not patients) at Project Walk do a lot of fundraising to help pay the $100/hr charge.

Now that Nate is getting stronger and healthier, he has started a new non-profit called "One Less Problem". His organization will create websites for people with spinal cord injuries. This will help them with their fundraising and also help them stay in touch with their friends and family.

When I read that The Big House Big Heart Run was being opened up to all charities, we signed up a team for Nate's charity. I haven't run a 5K in 25 years. It was a great motivator to train for the race to raise money for my son's charity. I finished in 33 minutes and 19 seconds! Nate flew home for the event. There were 13 of us and we raised $1,300. We all had fun & are planning to do it next year.

It is such a small world that the motivational speaker for the walk was a person with a spinal cord injury from California. The Extreme Home Makeover episode about her home modification also included clips from Project Walk.