By Jennifer Kirby
For Christmas 2009, Chris Rosati’s wife gave him a book about training for your first triathlon.
Although his first reaction was to joke “Thank you so much, but why’d you give me this book?” Rosati – who was no couch potato, but also not a serious athlete – read the book and quickly took it to heart. That March he completed a super sprint triathlon, followed by a sprint triathlon in May.
In June, he was trying to open a jar and had trouble gripping the top.
By September he had finished an Olympic triathlon and set his sights on a half-Ironman. It was about that time that he mentioned to his father some unexplained muscle twitches he’d been noticing for months. One doctor had written them off as stress-induced, but Rosati’s father made him an appointment with another doctor. On Nov. 29, 2010, Rosati was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. The disease attacks motor neurons, the cells that control the muscles, and is considered fatal.
“That,” says Rosati, “was the beginning of a new journey.”
Though the news was shocking, his symptoms were still minimal, and living in a state of relative denial was easy until August 2013. That’s when Rosati’s hands began to weaken, he started having trouble walking, and he was forced to acknowledge the inevitable.
“When you’re in a situation like I was in – am in – there comes a point when you look back and say, ‘Do I have any regrets? Would I do anything differently?’ And when I looked back, I realized that the only thing that I would do differently is I would worry less,” Rosati explains. “I just started weighing my whole life. And all I worry about now is anything that can negatively impact the health or happiness of my friends or family. Late for an appointment? I don’t care. What am I gonna do for money? I don’t care.
“I shouldn’t say I don’t care; I don’t worry. … There’s a difference between worrying and caring, and I care deeply.”
Rosati, of Durham, had always wanted to work in nonprofit, and he’d always wanted to build a company. So when he had an idea for a charity last fall, he went for it, founding Inspire Media Network, dedicated to helping people do “really cool, inspiring things,” in October.
Just a couple of weeks later he was speaking to a group of Durham high school students and told them about a quirky notion of his that involved hijacking a Krispy Kreme truck. Two of the students emailed him afterward to say thanks for the speech, which was all about following dreams, and he got to thinking: Shouldn’t he be practicing what he preached?
The next morning he started a Facebook page called “A Krispy Kreme Heist.” On it he explained that “for reasons I cannot fully explain, I’ve occasionally daydreamed about stealing a Krispy Kreme truck and being a modern Robin Hood, driving around handing out ‘hot’ doughnuts, just to make people smile.” Eight hours later, Krispy Kreme contacted him to offer up 1,000 doughnuts to give away, plus the use of a Krispy Kreme bus.
It was, coincidentally, exactly the kind of project his new nonprofit had been created to encourage. “Never in my mind did I think the Krispy Kreme Heist would be one of those stories,” he says, “but I’m glad it worked out.”
The heist made a great story, and local and national media lapped it up, giving Rosati and his nonprofit a platform for his message of living fully, which to him means loving deeply, pursuing dreams and helping others. “Because I’ve done those things well … it doesn’t make me completely at peace with what’s happened, but it makes it a whole lot less difficult,” he says. “If I hadn’t loved fully, and lived and tried, I don’t know what my attitude would be, but I bet it would be very different.”
The average rate of survival for ALS is often estimated at 30 months after the onset of symptoms, according to the ALS Therapy Development Institute. With the time he has left, Rosati is most focused on making memories with his wife of 10 years, Anna, and daughters Logan, 8, and Delaney, 3. He’s working to build Inspire Media into “something that will live beyond my life,” he’s advocating and interacting with other ALS patients and their families, and he’s inspiring countless others.
“There’s a great freedom that comes with this diagnosis, and that is it removes all fear of failure,” Rosati says. “I’m amazed at what we as people are capable of doing, and it doesn’t take ALS. So my main message would be, ‘Don’t wait to be amazing.’”
———-
Jennifer Kirby is a freelance writer and copy editor who loves early morning summer runs more than just about anything. She lives in Southern Pines, N.C., with her husband and their two preschoolers. Find more of her work at http://www.JenniferDareKirby.com and http://www.JenniferDareDesigns.etsy.com.
