Augie Nieto - Augies Quest: One Mans Journey from Success to Significance

ONE MANS JOURNEY FROM
SUCCESS TO SIGNIFICANCE

Augie Nieto

AND

T. R. Pearson

Foreword by Mitch Albom

This book is dedicated to Lynne,

my wife, soul mate, and the love of my life, and to our four children, Austin, Lindsay, Nicole, and Danielle. I was drafted and they enlisted in this war. I will be indebted to them for the rest of my life.

I also dedicate this book to the past, present, and future sufferers of ALS. I will donate all proceeds from this book to Augies Quest.

All my love,
Augie

I NEVER KNEW the healthy Augie Nieto. By the time I was introduced to him, in his home in California, sitting in a chair, smiling broadly as he took my hand, he had already been diagnosed with ALS, and a transformation had begun.

By transformation, I do not mean the awful collapse the disease bringsthe thievery of your walking, your lifting, your movement, your body. No. I refer here to the transformation of Augies heart and spirit, its growth and full-scale blossoming. This happens sometimes with ALS, too. It happened with my old professor Morrie Schwartz. Similarly afflicted with this disease, Morrie observed, from a wheelchair, how leaves grow their most bright and colorful just before they die.

And he proceeded to do the same.

Augie Nieto is on that path. Although as successful as a man could ask to be, as wealthy, as handsome, as lucky in love and family as the mind can imagine, this, right now, is his shining hour. These days. This work. This book. This is his blossoming. ALS takes so much away. But in the right person, it also gives a great deal.

Augie is such a person.

He told me that day in his home by the sea that he was going to fight. He told me he was going to beat this thingmaybe not, to use baseball terms, in this inning, in this at bat, but before the end of the game. And I believe him. Anyone who talks to Augie believes him.

I am blessed to have you as a friend, Augie has said to me many times, always, not surprisingly, beating me to the punch. Even slowed, Augie is quick. There is humor in his voice and whimsy in his eyes and a caring soul that exudes from his pores. You can understand how he built an exercise machine into a small business empire. You can understand why people flocked to work with him. He has a charm and a seductive inspiration. He would have made a great coach, because you are ready, after a half hour by his side, to knock down a wall for him.

And his gift to the world is his use of that inspiration in the fight against ALS. To my knowledge, Augie is the first person with this disease to employ business acumen to attack it. Eschewing the typical donation-to-existing-research approach, he has formulated a clear, multi-pronged plan for pulling up the roots of this disease. And he is charging at it with money, which means manpower, which means findings, which means progress, which means hope.

He does all this while still being the loving husband and father he has always been, while still finding time to laugh, read a book, shed a tear, or send encouraging messages to the many people who have contacted him.

During Morries final months, I witnessed him crying whenever he read about people suffering in the world, or saw footage of war on TV. I once asked him how he worked up such sympathy for people hed never met in countries hed never visited.

When you realize your own mortality, he said, you also feel the pain of anyone whos suffering. It doesnt matter where. We are all more alike than different.

I believe that is true. We are all more alike than different. That is the meaning of humanity. Augie Nieto appeals to the noblest part of that humanity, the bright, shining part of us, the part that wants to help others even as we need help ourselves.

He could have, years ago, written a book about his success in the business world. But he would tell you now, that would not have been his true story. This is his true story, and in it youll find a piece of your own, a common nugget of humanity, a leaf of the brightest, most stunning colors. Augie Nieto has had many things taken from him, but what he has been given he shares now with all of us: the transformation of a heart that beats for itself to a heart that beats for the world.

Mitch Albom,
author of Tuesdays with Morrie
and For One More Day

T HE TROUBLE BEGAN with a sharp twinge in the summer of 2004. Forty-six-year-old Augie Nieto had endured bouts of lumbar pain before, but this one was different, more tenacious and acute. The discomfort lasted for weeks and only ebbed after a full course of prednisone and three epidural injections. Augie attributed the ordeal to overexertion and middle age, but what seemed at the time an isolated episode would soon take on grimmer significance. That twinge would prove to be the opening salvo in a cascading calamity.

Over the course of the following months, Augie noticed a gradual erosion in his strength and endurance. A lifelong weight lifter, marathoner, and evangelical fitness fanatic, Augie was soon incapable of training with his customary hundred-pound weights. Then ninety pounds proved too much. Then eighty. And seventy. At length, he was reduced to working out with forty-pound weights, which he blamed largely on his weak back but also on the curious state of his right arm. The muscles had begun to twitch. The entire limb was alive, day and night, with rapid-fire, involuntary contractions. The condition was painless but maddening.

By early 2005, Augies speech had slowed perceptibly, and he was having difficulty reaching across his body with his right hand to spread shaving cream on his left cheek. A January trip to Vietnam found Augie waterskiing on the Mekong River, where the towrope pulled out of his hands, a novel experience for this veteran out-doorsman. Id never had that happen to me before, Augie confessed. I came home and told my wife, Weve got to check this out.

At the time Augie had no personal physician, but through the years hed undergone numerous biannual executive physicals at the Mayo Clinics Scottsdale facility. When he called for an appointment, the staff was quick to accommodate him, and Augie and Lynne Nieto flew from their Southern California home to Arizona on the evening of March 23. The following morning, Augie met with the physician who would serve as coordinator and quarterback for the battery of tests he would undergo in the ensuing two days.

The Mayo Clinic prefers to start cold with its patients. Its doctors consult no past histories but begin anew with every evaluation. Augie merely provided a description of his symptoms, and a team of physiciansspecialists in far-ranging fieldsbegan quizzing and prodding him as they set about working with exhaustive deliberation toward a diagnosis. They analyzed Augies blood chemistry, subjected him to thoroughgoing motor reflex tests, and performed both a CT scan and an MRI in a bid to pinpoint the cause of his degenerating strength.

Everyone hoped that the trouble would prove to be relatively benign, a case of heightened stress and overexertion or, possibly, chronic Lyme disease. But by Friday afternoon, Augies team had only succeeded in eliminating potential culprits, not identifying a cause.