For Dana Hunt, the diagnosis was life-changing.
“We're all terminal, there's no cure, there's no treatment really," Hunt explains her diagnosis of ALS from three years ago. But instead of slowing down, she leaned into the life she’s always loved, adventure.
“They basically say; Good luck, go live your life, so that's what we're doing," Hunt says.
Before ALS, Dana loved paragliding. At first, she thought the disease meant those days were over. But with help from her best friend she found a way back into the air.
“There's nothing really like it," Hunt says. "And when you feel like yourself again, when this diagnosis has taken so much from you and you have that return to self feeling...when I was in the air, I thought, ALS? What ALS?”.
That feeling of freedom, even if just for a moment is something Dana now works to share.
Through her nonprofit Adaptive Impact, she helps bring people living with mobility issues from across the country to San Diego for flight experiences like this one.
People like Gena Heape.
“When you're in the air, you're not dying, you're living," Heape says about her experience.
She says she never imagined paragliding or skydiving. She’s now done both.
“When you get diagnosed with ALS, everything shifts. I'm dying anyway, so why not?," Heape says.
Through fundraisers, Adaptive Impact covers the cost, flights that normally run hundreds of dollars. “It's become Helping people fly and helping people get a break in their storms," Hunt says.
In less than a year, the nonprofit has raised more than twenty thousand dollars helping fund sixty flights.
Her work will be celebrated this weekend, being honored as Community Partner of the Year by ALS San Diego.
"It means that we're having an impact on my specific community in San Diego, that means the world to me to help people in my situation," Hunt says.
And as long as she can, she plans to keep sharing the sky with those who need it most.
“I'm trying to also do as many possible things before I die in the biggest way, and then also do good," Hunt says. "I want to bring joy to people, there's nothing better.”
