He Has the Right Attitude to Fight for This Cause

There was no grand plan here. The Reed family had not mapped out this road, had not planned to be hanging with Christopher Reeves and Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg this weekend, had never figured that they would be working to push a bill through the California assembly that is named the Roman Reed Bill for Spinal Cord Injury Research, a bill named for their son Roman.

But then the Reeds never figured to be watching a junior college football game one sunny, fall afternoon, watching first with parental pride, with the video camera filming every step Roman took, then watching in horror as Roman didn’t get up from a pile, didn’t move. “This looks bad,” Gloria Reed said to her husband, Don. “Don, this looks really bad.”

Bad? Who decides what is bad?

Roman Reed is 24 years old, father of a two-year-old son named Roman and husband to Terri. Roman works as a recruiter for the Cal football program while he is attending school. He is also a quadriplegic who had been told by doctors that he would never be able to drive a car again or move any muscle that was lower in his body than his neck and also that he would very likely be unable to father a child.

That was bad.

The accident was bad. On Sept. 10, 1994, Roman was a sophomore linebacker for Chabot College, a junior college in Hayward. Roman had plans, NFL plans. He was big, 6-feet-4, 235 pounds; he was strong, bench press of 245 pounds; he was fast, having been timed in the 40 in 4.52 seconds.

The way that Roman was injured, hurtling himself head-first at the ball carrier, a tackling technique that Roman calls “bad,” and that he had been taught in college, that was also bad.

And the broken neck, at the sixth vertebra, broken where Roman would no longer have use of his shoulders or hands, arms or legs, that was bad.

But everything since, everything that has happened in the last five years, the way his girlfriend of a year, Terri, stuck with Roman; the way his sister, Desiree, who was studying to be a lawyer, pored over medical books and Internet sites and learned about a drug available only in Switzerland that helped restore to Roman strength and movement in his triceps muscles, enough strength that he was able to operate his wheelchair, transfer himself from bed to chair, learn to drive an adapted van, the way his mother and father refit their home and got up early every day to help Roman with exercises.

Oh, yes, and the bill.

This Roman Reed bill is going to be very, very good. Roman is convinced.

“This bill is going to turn hope into reality,” Roman says by phone from his home in Fremont, Calif. In the background you can hear little Roman babbling as Terri comes home from work. “This bill has the power to do that, turn hope into reality, to help everybody.”

What the Roman Reed Bill for Spinal Cord Injury proposes is that a $15 fee be added to every speeding ticket issued in the state of California and that the $15 be put into a fund for spinal cord injury research.

Don Reed happened to read a story about a similar bill that had been passed in New York. A police officer who had been shot and paralyzed in the line of duty had conceived the idea. Why, Don Reed figured, could this not happen in California?

“It seemed like a wonderful idea to me,” said Don Reed. Don is a junior high English teacher and amateur playwright. He is not a politician. But Don threw himself into this quest. Don gets up at 1:30 each morning to work on promoting this bill and then he heads to Roman’s about 5 to do exercises with his son and then he goes to work.

Assemblyman John Dutra signed on to sponsor the bill. It has passed through the state health committee and has now gone to the appropriations committee, where it will be voted on May 26 or May 27.

As the Reed family has become wholehearted supporters of research to find a cure for the effects of spinal cord injuries, they have become e-mail buddies with Reeves, the actor who was paralyzed after a horseback riding accident.

Roman says he and Reeves have communicated their belief that each will some day stand and walk again. It is for a Hollywood benefit for the Christopher Reeves Paralysis Foundation that Don, Gloria, Roman and Terri came to Los Angeles this weekend. “It’s so exciting,” Terri says.

Terri also says that while Roman and his perpetually upbeat parents have never let the world see anything but their determination.

“I’ve always kept a positive attitude,” Roman says. “I have. Little Roman, he’s a miracle. Terri, she dropped everything and has been my support system. She’s been a really great wife. My dad and mom and sister, they’ve done everything for me. How could I not be positive? I pray for a cure all the time and I truly believe there will be one. That’s what the bill is for. To find a cure.”

So once again Roman Reed has launched himself head-first into something he loves. But this time the head-first technique is not bad. It is very, very good.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.