Natalie Morales: Show Your Muscle for the Muscular Dystrophy Association

As national correspondent and co-anchor of the third hour of NBC's Today, Natalie Morales has covered everything from the 9/11 attacks to presidential elections — and has met some of the world's most interesting and inspiring people along the way.

But she was more than struck when she interviewed Life Fitness founder Augie Nieto in 2006 for Today, just after he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, (ALS), better known as Lou Gehrig's disease. In the years since Morales first met Nieto, the disease has robbed him of his ability to talk, walk and eat. Despite the challenges he now faces, he is living a full life, surrounded by family and friends — and raising millions for research for ALS through his charity, Augie's Quest.

"To this day, he is the most inspirational person I have ever met in my life," Morales tells Tonic. "People always ask me who's been the best person I've ever interviewed and which celebrities I've liked interviewing. I tell them that it's the people who show you that you can rise above and beyond what life hands you who impress me the most — and Augie is a true example of that. He has so much courage."

Nieto is also the most positive person Morales says she has ever met. "He has said to me, ‘A lot of people would say this is a death sentence, but to me, this is a life sentence," says Morales. "He said that he wants to show people with ALS how they can live a full life and do a world of good knowing they have this disease."

Morales: Lending a Powerful Helping Hand

With Nieto as a powerful role model, Morales is doing her part to help find a cure for ALS and other debilitating diseases. Not only has she done several stories on Nieto and Augie's Quest for Today, she recently joined the Muscular Dystrophy Association's Muscle Team, a group of celebrity ambassadors dedicated to building awareness for the MDA, which is trying to raise funding for research for 43 neuromuscular diseases including ALS.

On the August 6 edition of Today, she unveiled her new print ad for MDA's Make a Muscle, Make a Difference campaign — the same day it debuted in USA Today. Like former Access Hollywood host Nancy O'Dell, who lost her mom to ALS, The Biggest Loser host Alison Sweeney and Dancing with the Stars' Tom Bergeron and other celebrities, Morales shot a public service announcement for the MDA campaign. On top of that, Morales is also taping a special appeal for Jerry Lewis' upcoming MDA Telethon.

"Natalie knows how important our lifesaving mission is, having previously interviewed athletic equipment pioneer Augie Nieto," said MDA President & CEO Gerald C. Weinberg on MDA.org. "Augie has remarkably raised more than $23 million for MDA-sponsored ALS research since being diagnosed with the rapidly progressive muscle disease."

Morales hopes the campaign will inspire others to help. "I am hoping to raise awareness for all of these various neuromuscular diseases," she says. "I have seen and covered too many stories where sadly, you see what parents are going through when a child is sick, and even later in life, you see what adults, like my friend Augie, go through with these diseases."

Augie Nieto: One of the World's True Heroes

Morales is impressed not just with all the good that Nieto has done to try to find a cure for ALS — but his indomitable spirit in the face of a devastating diagnosis. "It's amazing to see everything he has been able to do," she says. "I admire him so much."

Nieto, a self-described fitness buff, was vacationing with his family in 2005 when he lost all feeling in his arms. His doctors ran all kinds of tests before giving him the most devastating news he had received in his life: that he had ALS. "He said to me at the time: ‘That's the one time you wish you were diagnosed with MS,'" says Morales.

Patients who are diagnosed with ALS are given just three to five years to live. "It's a death sentence," says Morales. "There's nothing you can do when you get the diagnosis. His doctor told him to spend as much time as he could with his family and to get his affairs in order," says Morales."He said, ‘I'm not going to spend my life that way.'" For him, it was a call to action.

"He is spending time with his family and his wife, Lynne, who is a pillar of strength, but he also wants to get everybody involved in this initiative because to him it's unacceptable that they don't know anything about ALS. They don't know what causes it. And there's no cure."

Shortly after his diagnosis, Nieto teamed up with the MDA and founded Augie's Quest to raise much-needed funding for ALS. "Since ALS is an orphan disease (5,000 to 6,000 people a year die from ALS), a lot of pharmaceutical companies won't touch it or do research on it because they know within five years their subjects — whoever they are studying — aren't going to be there," she says. "And the likelihood of a drug being profitable for an orphan disease is very slim."

Nieto, who announced on Today in 2009 that he and his wife, Lynne (the couple, above left), are aiming to raise $30 million for ALS research by 2014, has been given numerous awards for his work with Augie's Quest, including the National Association of Hispanic Journalists' prestigious President's Award in 2008. Then-NAHJ President Rafael Olmeda cited Nieto as someone who, without fanfare, put a "Latino face on an American story."

In 2009, Five for Fighting wrote a song in Nieto's honor to help raise money for Augie's Quest.

Nieto is the kind of guy who can tell you what the true meaning of life is, she says. "He said to me, ‘I've never felt more loved or more needed,' says Morales. "Sadly, he said, you don't realize all that you value in life until you have it almost taken away from you. This has been a long goodbye that has allowed me to tell everybody I love and know how much I treasure them."

Indeed, in Nieto's most recent interview with Morales on Today in 2009, he told her that he has never felt happier in his life than in the five years since he received his diagnosis. "When your family and friends think you're at the end of your life, they say things normally reserved for your eulogy," he told her. "When they say these remarks, it makes you feel proud of the impact you had on family and friends and people you've worked with."

But since Morales' first interview with Nieto four years ago, she has sadly seen his condition rapidly decline. When she first interviewed him, he was able to walk and talk, though his speech was slurred. "He can't type or talk anymore, so he communicates with a retinal eye scanner from Dynavox. This new technology reads the retina of his eyes when he is looking at a computer screen and can tell what letters he's looking at. When I send him an email, he sends one back in an hour or so."

Despite his deteriorating condition, he remains as busy as ever. He joined the board of directors of Dynavox in 2009, because of his business acumen — and because he has seen firsthand how much it has helped improve his quality of life.

Since his diagnosis, Nieto has also written two books since his diagnosis: Augie's Quest: One Man's Journey From Success to Significance, with co-author T.R. Pearson and a forward by Tuesdays with Morrie author Mitch Ablom, and Reciprocity, Incorporated: Give Versus Take: The Secret of Successful, with a forward by Lance Armstrong. "In that book, he interviewed more than 30 CEOs, talking about the importance of giving and how when life deals you its biggest blows, you can make it a true blessing."

With all that Nieto has accomplished — and is still accomplishing, "he is showing people that you don't have to go silently," says Morales. "He hopes that by showing others how to live life to the fullest, more drug companies will invest in research more and look for a cause and a cure for ALS and other neuromuscular diseases. He is trying to make sure that our attention doesn't go away from these diseases."

So is Morales. She teamed up with MDA because she says, "it's important to me that we remind everyone that their charitable dollars do go a long way. Not much was known about any of these diseases 50 years ago, but because of the MDA, look how far we've come and how much the quality of life has improved for so many people.

"All of the research for any muscular or neuromuscular diseases that you read about or that they teach in med school comes from the support of the MDA. Jerry's Kids and all of the MDA campaigns have done a world of good, but there's still no cure for many of these illnesses.

"My goal is to continue to shine the spotlight on these diseases and encourage people to continue to make donations because it is their dollars that have allowed the MDA to make such strides."

We at Tonic congratulate Natalie Morales, Augie and Lynne Nieto Jerry Lewis, and everyone at the MDA for their tireless efforts to help find a cure — and improve the quality of life for everyone with ALS, Muscular Dystrophy and other neuromuscular diseases. You are true Tonic heroes!

Photo courtesy of MDA.