Extra Hands For ALS

Hit With Disease Jack Orchard Found Solution To Help Others

(CBS)  There's a chance that the American Hero whose story you are about to read won't be around this time next year. But that doesn't seem to worry him at all, The Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen reports.

If you think you know how people with life-threatening illnesses are supposed to act, then you've never met Jack Orchard.

He may not look especially heroic. But the frail man in the wheelchair has the courage to change the world, even as his own world comes apart.

Orchard has the kind of life story you see in the movies: A child born into a loving family, a teen-age football player who hit the books as hard as he hit the opposing line.

Orchard graduated from Harvard, and eventually found himself in Moscow and in business.

His wife, Eve Tetzlaff, says, "Jack was basically your typical type-A, hard-charging, finance guy."

Life was good, and about to get better.

Tetzlaff says, "We met living in Moscow, and he had co-founded with a number of partners a financial institution that's still one of the biggest."

And if there was such a thing as a perfect match, Orchard and Tetzlaff might qualify: Both were young, educated and, after their wedding in 2000, poised to begin an amazing life journey together. But it would not be anything like they expected.

Not long after they were married, Orchard began having unexplained muscle cramps and weakness. Within six months, his doctors began to suspect ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

People stricken with ALS lose control of their muscles and, in time, their abilities to walk, talk and breathe. There is no known cure. A diagnosis of ALS is, in effect, a death sentence.

Tetzlaff says, "They literally told us go home and get your papers in order. There's nothing you can do. And we had just gotten married, we were in our early 30s, and we just could not take that as the fact of our lives."

Orchard was told that there was nothing he could do about it. But he did do something about it.