By James Striplin
Lodi News-Sentinel
LODI, Calif. — Lodi resident Brad Clark has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, and the only noticeable function he can perform is the motion of his lips when he communicates.
Clark can only move thanks to the aid of his licensed vocational nurse, Jimmy Sinon; his live-in caregiver, Shari Silva; and his motorized wheelchair — the wheelchair he lost Monday afternoon when his van caught fire on Highway 99.
Sinon said he was driving Clark to an appointment with his Stockton doctor when he saw a man calling out to him from the vehicle next to them.
“The guy beside me said, ‘You’re burning, you’re burning!,’ and I said ‘What?,’” Sinon said.
When Sinon turned his attention back to the road, he noticed that flames were beginning to reach out from the driver’s side from the floor and that smoke was coming from the hood of the van.
Sinon said he wasted no time, quickly got out of the car and pulled Clark from the vehicle.
“I didn’t leave him there,” Sinon said. “I told him, ‘If you’re going to die, I’m going to die too.’”
When Sinon was pulling out Clark, the nurse said he saw flames rising towards Clark’s feet.
He said that he didn’t have time to worry about the motorized wheelchair or about causing injury to Clark, because Clark’s wounds would heal and Sinon thought the vehicle was going to explode.
The vocational nurse was able to pull Clark to safety from the van, which was soon fully consumed by the flames.
“Jimmy is a hero,” Silva said, reading Clark’s lips at his home. “Without Jimmy, I would have been dead.”
Clark was featured in a Lodi News-Sentinel article written in 2002 for his invention that drains fluid that collects in the trap of a respirator often used by people suffering from ALS.
He designed it one letter at a time and had a caregiver draw the plans based on his description.
It’s not his only invention, either. Anyone who visits Clark will see that he sometimes uses a mouth piece he designed to write text on a laptop screen in order to communicate.
As for the damages from the fire, Clark said he lost $24,000 from the van and another $17,000 from the motorized wheelchair.
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©2014 the Lodi News-Sentinel (Lodi, Calif.)