Team Rallies Around Port Jeff Station Woman With ALS

Kim Leung was a teacher at Three Village Elementary School when she was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, in January, 2008. Since then, Leung and her family have done what they can to help raise money and create awareness for a disease that aside from some recent genetic discoveries, still has no real known cause, no treatment and no cure.

Leung’s husband Denny is a worker for National Grid and the family lives off Boyle Road in Port Jefferson Station.

Team Kim–as the friends and family who rally around Leung call themselves–have taken part in the Ride for Life, an annual trek across Long Island to help fund research, first started by Long Islander and ALS patient, Chris Pendergast after he was diagnosed.

On Sunday, Team Kim, led by Leung’s daughter and team captian Nicole Leung, came out to another event in .

The Walk to Defeat ALS raised almost $600,000 last year, money that goes toward support groups, certified ALS clinics and an equipment lending program for people with ALS (known as PALS.) as well as and scientific research. This year, organizers said they hoped to exceed that goal.

Leung is in a wheelchair now. The disease ravages a person's muscles, redndering them inert. She attends an ALS clinic at Stony Brook Hospital, known as a Certified ALS Center, one of only a few dozen muti-disciplinary neurology clinics across the country that are given a stamp of approval from The ALS Association nationally.

On Sunday, the team sported purple shirts emblazoned with the words Team Kim as they walked with almost 5,000 others. Event though the Walk to Defeat ALS on Long Island is over, you can still donate to Team Kim until the end of 2011. To make a donation please visit their fundraising page here.