Advocating for epilepsy patients and service dogs

NORFOLK, Neb. --  Nearly 100 walkers and a few ambitious runners came to the second annual STOMP Out Epilepsy and SUDEP Awareness 5k Walk-Run Saturday at Fountain Point Medical, where organizer Heidi Ann Stevens promoted the Chelsea Hutchison Foundation.

“They give seizure dog grants, monitors, anti-suffocation pillows,” she’s said. She’s hoping to raise ten thousand dollars — the starting price of a service dog, such as Rocket -- owned by one of the kids participating in the walk on Saturday. 

“He helps me every time I have a seizure he rolls me on my side,” said Gunner Hemingway about Rocket, a white lab by his side. “He’s my best friend too.”

“They can alert family members that it’s happening, if they fall face forward they can move the face to prevent suffocation,” Amanda Masinelli, trainer, Domesti-Pups said.

The dogs provide so many useful resources that Stevens advocated for them to be covered by insurance one day in Nebraska.

“I’m a mom on a mission; I just try to have a purple conversation so we can pay it forward and other people can have answers,” Stevens said.