Scott Fujita's Cleveland connection provides

Mary Jo Elmo was driving her Subaru Outback home from work 10 months ago, listening to sports talk radio when her curiosity and Scott Fujita's advocacy intersected somewhere on the road to Lyndhurst.

Elmo, a lifelong Browns fan and University Hospitals nurse practitioner, heard the hosts discussing a Super Bowl pregame feature NBC had aired on former New Orleans Saints special teams ace Steve Gleason. A year earlier, he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a terminal disease that erodes the nerves controlling voluntary muscle movement and leads to paralysis. The hosts mentioned Gleason was a good friend of Fujita, the Browns linebacker who had done countless interviews promoting the fight against ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Fujita had become one of Elmo's favorite players in part because she considers him so well spoken. And, also really cute. In terms of her football evaluation, Elmo admits to being "shallow" that way.

But that night, as she typed the keywords "Fujita" and "friend" and "ALS" into her computer, she was driven by empathy. For nine years, she had worked for Dr. Raymond Onders, who helped developed the Diaphragm Pacing System, which has allowed hundreds of spinal cord and ALS patients to breathe easier through electrical stimulation.

Onders had been performing the procedure at University Hospitals since 2000. His third patient was Superman, or at least the actor who portrayed him.

As her research expanded, Elmo discovered Gleason was a celebrity, too. She learned how his blocked punt in the Saints' first home game after Hurricane Katrina is considered one of the franchise's greatest plays. How he lives by the mantras, "No White Flags" and "Awesome Ain't Easy." How he created a video journal for his son, Rivers, knowing he probably would not live long enough to see the boy graduate from high school.

Elmo wondered that night if Gleason was aware of diaphragm pacing or that the doctor most accomplished in the field lived in Cleveland. Locating Fujita's website, she wrote him an email, outlining the benefits and attaching corresponding links.

As Elmo pressed send, she had no idea what the next 10 months held in store. She could not have foreseen Fujita's challenges or Gleason's triumphs and travails.

Fujita always gets a smile on his face when he remembers meeting Gleason. He had just signed a free-agent deal with a franchise that, like so many of New Orleans' residents, had been displaced from its home in the fall of 2005 due to Katrina.

Some tried to dissuade him on New Orleans, citing the city's upheaval. But Fujita and his wife, Jaclyn, wanted to be part of the Gulf Coast's rebirth. One of the first persons to befriend them was the city's patron Saint.

Fujita was taking part in a conditioning program during the spring of 2006 when he met Gleason. Almost all his new teammates were in the weight room except for a free spirit who sat in the fieldhouse doing yoga.

"I said, 'Who is the guy with long hair?' and people said, 'That's Steve Gleason, he's on his own program,' " Fujita recalled. "I thought right then, 'I could get into this guy.' "

The Fujitas moved downtown and Gleason served as their tour guide to its vibrant culture. Everybody knew Gleason and Gleason knew everybody, his autographed picture hanging like a seal of approval in so many bars and restaurants. The player who Fujita calls the "adopted son of New Orleans" even married a local girl, Michel Varisco.

In Katrina's wake, Gleason's foundation launched "Backpacks for Hope," an initiative providing relief to young hurricane victims in the form of school supplies.

Gleason played seven NFL seasons, all with the Saints. He is best remembered for one play, a blocked punt in the team's first game back in the Superdome on Sept. 25, 2006, that resulted in a touchdown. The moment, captured on national television, became so synonymous with the city's comeback a bronze statue would be erected outside the stadium.

    "I never want to overstate football's importance but there was such a connection between the team and the city that year," Fujita said. "It was an emotional wave that carried the team and the city through the rebuilding effort."

Gleason retired in 2008 and the next year began working as a consultant for a clean-energy company. Fujita shares Gleason's passion for environmental issues, as any Browns rookie caught throwing a Styrofoam container in the recycle bin can attest.

Fujita joined the Browns in 2010 after helping deliver a Super Bowl to New Orleans. He returned to the Bayou with his new team that season and played one of his best games as Brown. On that trip, however, Gleason confided that he had begun to experience odd twitching in the muscles of his upper arm and chest.

As doctors began ruling out possible causes, Fujita recalled losing an uncle to ALS, a disease that kills about two in every 100,000 people annually, according to the ALS Association. The average life expectancy is two to five years from time of diagnosis.

In the first week of January 2011, Fujita was at his California home when he received news from Gleason. The linebacker wept so uncontrollably his wife ran into living room assuming a close relative had died.

"We are football guys, we've always been in this football culture and at some point you want to hear someone say, 'Get back on that line and run another gasser, get back on the line and keep running.' " Fujita recalled. "Steve said to me, 'At some point, Bro, I might need you to keep me running,' And that's where we both kind of lost it on the phone.

As Fujita helped his friend connect with medical personnel at University Hospitals in February 2012, he took a moment to consider "how the stars had to align" to make it possible.

What were the odds that Mary Jo Elmo, who helps treat ALS patients with a new technology, would be listening to Cleveland sports talk radio at the exact moment the hosts were discussing his friendship with Gleason?

Fujita is a board member of Team Gleason, a foundation that advocates for technological advances benefiting Lou Gehrig patients. Until Elmo's email, Gleason and his supporters were unaware of the pacing system, which received Food and Drug Administration approval for the treatment of ALS last year.

Through a series of correspondences, Elmo and Onders explained to the Gleasons how the device works. Four electrodes, or stainless steel wires as thin as dental floss, are implanted in the diaphragm. They are controlled by a hand-held, battery-powered external pulse generator that stimulates the diaphragm and causes the muscles to contract. Clinical trials showed patients delayed the need for tracheotomy ventilation by 16 months.