By MADDY VITALE
Lori Koch Krikorian, of Ocean City, and her family and friends took to the Boardwalk on Saturday for Team Loru’s Walkers for the ALS walk to raise money and awareness about the progressive neuromuscular disease.
Koch Krikorian, 58, her husband, Erik, and sister, Kathy Costa, gathered at the start of the event.
Hundreds of participants with the other 54 teams in the two-mile walk to raise funds to support ALS patient services and research anxiously awaited Lori’s cue.
She cut the ribbon with a pair of oversized scissors. There was applause and then everyone got moving.
“Her speech was slurred,” Koch Krikorian’s sister, Kathy Costa, of Hamilton Township in Mercer County, said of Lori’s initial diagnosis with ALS. “It was hard, really hard, when we found out and it progressed so fast.”
But Costa noted there is also something positive in all of this.
“She is good overall mentally,” she said of Lori.
Like Koch Krikorian’s team, family and friends joined their loved ones to raise money for their teams.
The ultimate goal was to raise money for awareness and research, with the hope that one day there will be a cure.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is fatal and slowly robs the body of its ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe, according to ALS.org.
Cheryl Dunagan, of Williamstown, N.J., was part of the team Kickin’ Up a Cure-BAM! for her father, Guy Dunagan, of Williamstown, who attended the walk with his wife, Joanne.
Guy Dunagan was diagnosed with ALS five years ago.
“It’s tough, but these kinds of events offer a lot of support. It is a community,” Cheryl Dunagan said. “The organization offers a lot of support for people fighting ALS and their families.”
Cheryl’s niece, Juliana Geary, 10, of Northfield, joined her as Cheryl helped people sign up for the walk who were a part of her father’s team.
“We are here for Guy,” a woman and man said in unison to Cheryl.
The Dunagans have done four of the ALS walks on the Ocean City Boardwalk.
Last year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the walk was canceled.
But Cheryl said they were pleased that the event was able to be held again.
And she has every intention of participating in the annual walk each year.
“Nobody is fighting this alone,” Cheryl noted of ALS.
The participants walked together down the Boardwalk. Some waved signs with the names of their teams, while others held up signs that read “Fight ALS.”
Lori’s husband, Erik Krikorian, said he wants that “nugget of hope” for the woman he has been with for 24 years.
He looks for positive signs, a medical breakthrough, perhaps, to give him much more time with his wife.
“We have to be hopeful,” Erik said as he walked near his wife. “People need help and they need hope.”
For more information about ALS from the Greater Philadelphia Chapter visit www.ALS.org.
