As middle-aged men in bikini tops stopped cars on the corner of Hazel Ave. and Connaught Dr. last Thursday, many drivers had their money in hand, ready to donate, eager to get on their way, often willing to give without waiting to hear for what cause.

Maybe it was the heat, or just the tourists who wanted to get to the grocery stores and campsites. Or perhaps they just didn’t want to talk for too long to men in bikinis.

But for some people in Jasper, the efforts of the A & W workers, the Jasper Rockhoppers and local classic car owners made to get just a little change to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis goes a long way.

For Luigi Caputo, and Donna Zalapski, the act means a lot.

Caputo, a local Jasper resident, has been living with MS for over 18 years. First diagnosed with the autoimmune disease in college, he knows the money raised by his fellow Jasperites is going to a good cause, and with some new Canadian research showing reversal effects on MS, Caputo is hopeful.

“Right now they are still testing it on mice. But it looks really promising and I hope this is something that could come out. Because I tell you, I don’t personally need to be running again, but to make life a little easier would be nice,” he says.

Once an active young man who played a lot of hockey, Caputo says he had the routine people with MS get into. First, he started walking with a limp, from that, a cane. For the longest time he was on crutches until it was too hard to get around. 

Living with the disease, along with issues in his personal life, Caputo says he kind of got set back. Now, back on track, the Parks Canada employee moves around in a wheelchair.

“I was a really active person, I played a lot of sports. The thing with me was that I was first getting the symptoms in college, I was going to school in Edmonton. Because of the trouble that I was having, I couldn’t finish it and I had to move back home. But I did manage to finish it through correspondence, so that was a good thing,” says Caputo.

Zalapski, a fellow Jasperite and Parks Canada employee, has been living with the disease for more than 20 years, and while she has completely different symptoms than Caputo, she still deals with the disease every day.

There are many different faces of MS, says Zalapski, who lives a normal life to the untrained eye – things like loss of vision and hearing, or feeling weak, having no energy to play with her kids, and being accused of being drunk at work are all things she’s had to deal with over the years, and have kept her from the active and running lifestyle she used to live.

“People need to realize that people’s disabilities aren’t always so obvious and so in your face,” she says, adding that many people who don’t have the visual, physical signs of MS often have a harder time psychologically dealing with it. “You’re fighting that prejudice, ‘there’s nothing wrong with you, why are you parking in that handicap spot, you can walk,’ well yeah, maybe I can’t walk quite as far.”

But Caputo and Zalapski aren’t alone in trying to find a cure – events like the one last week show  there is a lot of community support.

Caputo has had his hopes up so many times for potential cures and new research, but he says they always come to a dead end and you never hear of it again.

“Things don’t necessarily transfer from animal testing to human use – that doesn’t always happen. We’ve been on this rollercoaster for a long time, some things sound really promising, and often the side effects are worse than the disease,” adds Zalapski.

The latest research however, coming out of Montreal, has shown signs of reversing the effects of the disease on mice, and Caputo says it looks promising.

He and Zalapski also appreciate the support of the community during days like last Thursday, even if some people didn’t really want to see some of Jasper’s finest in bikinis.

“It does (give me hope), because I know it’s going to a good cause. You know, if we didn’t have this support, boy we’d be in trouble,” Caputo says.

The total money raised by A&W employees and the Rockhoppers was over $4,244. Residents are asked to be careful when donating money to MS, as a scam has been reporterd in Jasper by calls received from the US asking for donations. If approached to donate to MS, call Greg Van Tighem at 780-931-0075.