THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610180247 SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL COLUMN: RANDOM RAMBLES SOURCE: Tony Stein LENGTH: 76 lines
How's this for a story?
You're riding from Newport News to Pittsburgh to publicize the fight against a rare form of muscular dystrophy. You're in West Virginia and someone steals your bike. That leaves you stranded and mad enough to chew roofing nails. Then one of the grubbiest looking guy you ever saw turns out to be a combination of the federal government, Sherlock Holmes and Santa Claus.
A few hours later, you've got your bike back. You leave town feeling a lot better about the world in general and Berkeley Springs, W.Va., in particular.
Never mind that it's unlikely. It actually happened to Bob Lyytinen (say it Lit-tin-nen) of Deep Creek. He's a 34-year-old Navy man with a wife named Kaye and three kids named Joshua, Aaron and Lauren. Joshua, 8, has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, an uncommon variety that strikes only males beginning at about age 4. It's the most severe form, and there's no cure - yet.
To help push the hunt for that cure, Bob decided he would ride 527 miles to the University of Pittsburgh, where there is an MD research center. He left from Newport News Sept. 27. On Oct. 1, he had pedaled as far as Berkeley, W.Va., population 734, according to a AAA atlas.
Because Bob is a Moose, he stopped off at the Berkeley lodge. When he came back out to get some MD literature from his bike, the bike was gone. He called the police and the officer who talked with him spoke frankly. ``We can look for it,'' he said, ``but you'll probably never see it again.''
Total bummer, right?
``I was really upset,'' Bob says. ``I needed to walk. I needed to work off a lot of anger.'' On the way back to his motel, he passed a 7-Eleven. In front of it was this grungy guy with a beer bottle in a brown bag. Bob's anger was written all over his face, and the grungy guy asked what was wrong.
Bob told him and said ``I don't know if I ever want to come through this town again.'' So you'd expect the guy with the beer to shrug his shoulders, take another slug and walk away. Nope. The guy says to Bob, ``Let me make a phone call.'' Totally puzzled, Bob watches the guy make four or five calls.
Then he comes back and tells Bob ``I've called in a few markers. If your bike is in this town, it will be back before nightfall.'' Calling in a marker is street talk for getting a debt paid or a favor returned. Bob's puzzlement is high, and it peaks a few minutes later.
That's when two young men go into the 7-Eleven and Bob says one of them was in the Moose club earlier. ``I think I know where your bike is,'' the grungy guy says. Bob asks, ``Why are you doing all this?'' The answer is a shocker. The guy he's been talking to is an undercover agent for the federal Drug Enforcement Agency. He's in town checking on transit of drugs through Berkeley.
The two young men are awaiting sentencing on drug raps, the agent tells Bob. Returning the bike might earn them a few brownie points with the legal system. Sure enough, the agent, named Smitty, arranges a meeting, and the bike appears at Bob's motel. It sounds like fiction, but it's fact.
Unhappily, it's also a fact that Duchene muscular dystrophy is a tough enemy. What happens is that muscle groups grow weak. That progression has put Joshua Lyytinen in a wheelchair about 50 percent to 60 percent of the time. His spirits flourish, though. ``My legs don't work, but my brain works fine,'' he says.
And he's got some special help for his fetching and carrying. Three weeks ago, the family welcomed Dexter, an 80-pound mix of hound and golden retriever trained as an assistance dog. He pulls Joshua's wheelchair and picks things up when they fall. When Joshua is at school, Dexter plays big buddy and mama to Cleo, an orphan kitten the Lyytinens are raising. The kitten, 5 weeks old, is not much bigger than one of Dexter's paws, and it's a hoot to watch the dog gently schlurp the little fuzz ball.
At the end of Bob's ride to Pittsburgh, his wife drove him home. Looking back, he totes up a lot of talking done and literature passed out on the subject of Duchene muscular dystrophy. He specifically wants people to know about the 2Parents Project, an awareness group that's reachable at 1-800-714-KIDS. It works with families where there is Duchene's or a similar MD form called Becker. Or call Bob at 485-4429.
The federal narc named Smitty wrote a happy ending to the only really ugly part of Bob's ride and just about everything else that happened told him good things about people. ``All along the way,'' he says, ``folks were fantastic. I learned that there's a lot more good than bad out there.'' by CNB