By the time you read this issue was published, my wife Kathy and I were in Pennsylvania visiting with my sister Patricia Martini (shown left) who is suffering from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. She was diagnosed in November, just before I met Danielle Camacho, the Ladera Ranch mother who is also suffering from ALS. Danielle is featured on the cover of the June 2008 issue of the Ladera Times with her husband, Al, and Michelle Patterson during the Taste of Ladera (see below).

Learning of my sister’s illness and also my own ordeal with prostate cancer, Danielle wrote me a letter in which she said, in part: "Who would have ever thought such a devastating disease would bring myself, you, and your sister together . . . You will get treatment, you will survive, and you will write many stories on ALS that will move people to donate and find a cure. Your sister and I need you."

Well, I did get treatment for my cancer, I am surviving, and I’m trying to do my part to help Danielle, my sister, and other victims of ALS and their families. I have joined forces with Stu Millheiser, 57, of San Juan Capistrano, who has created the ALS Guardian Angels Foundation (click here to see story on page 4 of the June 2008 issue of the Ladera Times), and the ALS Association (www.alsa.org). We must find a cure for this horrific disease that strikes 5,000 new victims in the United States each year.

That said, I am going to take this opportunity to tell you about my big sister, Patricia Martini, two years my elder.

I came from a long line of women who were liberated long before someone coined the expression "Women’s Lib." My mother’s mother and my mother both owned and operated their own businesses. And my sister Patty Lou, the oldest of four Schmitt children, has carried on in their tradition.

Given that our mother worked full time, the three younger children, I being the second oldest at two years younger, looked and still look to Patty for leadership, strength, values and principles . . . and she has yet to disappointed us up to and including the courage and grace she is teaching us dealing with this devastating illness.

Growing up, Patty Lou was a lot like the character Betty on the TV show "Father Knows Best," played by Elinor Donahue, a smart, popular, loving, caring, nurturing, rock-solid, beautiful woman. You can see even at age 68 how beautiful she is, but she was so stunning and poised as a young woman that she was crowned Miss Pittsburgh in the Miss Universe Pageant, and then runner up for Miss Pennsylvania.

She earned her degree in nursing at Mercy Hospital and devoted much of her life to caring for others, first as a hospital nurse, then as a visiting nurse, and later in life carrying for our aging parents in their final years, as well her husband Marco, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease.

She was a very talented stage performer, usually getting the singing lead in most stage productions put on by her hometown little theater group. People who have seen her perform will tell you she could have easily starred in Hollywood or on Broadway had she chosen that as a career path. In addition, she performed her own award-winning magic act, a legacy handed down by our father who, as an amateur magician, went on to become the President of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.

Later in life, Patty Lou took on a real estate career, and took over and managed her husband’s rental properties when he became incapacitated by illness and, like her mother and grandmother before her, became a very successful business woman in her own right.

I could go on and on about her wonderful attributes, but I want to devote the rest of this column to telling her -- and anyone else interested enough to read this -- how much she means to me, and how much I love her. Oh, I’ve told her many times; we didn’t wait until someone was sick or dying to tell them we loved them in our family. It is no idle expression in our family. We mean it when we say it!

But when I told my beloved sister that she was the rock in my life, she was flabbergasted. But it’s true. I always looked up to her for strength, courage, advice, and moral leadership. I know it. You know it. And hopefully, by now, she knows it!

The truth is, I can’t imagine life without my Big Sister. But she has the worse case of ALS and it has progressed in just a few months from her driving her own car last December to where she can no longer type an email on her computer.

I’m terribly afraid that, after we return from our brief visit, I may never see her again. The thought of that possibility is more than I can bear.

As a journalist, I express my feelings best by the written word. And by writing this column in the Ladera Times, I am announcing for all the world to know how precious my sister, Patricia Lou is to me and my family. We love you so very much, Patty. Our prayers and love are with you . . . always and forever!

Jim Schmitt, Editor and Publisher