New Jersey son driving cross country to raise ALS awareness in honor of his mom

NEW JERSEY (WABC) -- As a recent high school graduate, 19-year-old Dean Mauriello isn't taking a class trip with friends before college. Instead, he's driving across the country, alone, interviewing people with the disease ALS along the way.

"It's good to think and heal and understand what's going through your head," Mauriello said. "Every day you make small decisions that can make the world a better place."

Dean's mother, Lisa Stockman Mauriello, died in 2021 just seven months after being diagnosed with ALS.

"The reason I am who I am is because of the values she instilled in me," he said.

Eyewitness News first reported on his mother's diagnosis in April of 2021, when she was fighting for expanded access to an experimental drug that could've prolonged her life.

Now her son is interviewing people around the country who are living with the disease.

"This journey might seem heavy or emotional for someone who's faced it personally before, but I also find it healing," Mauriello said.

He's calling his journey Limitless Lisa and he's sharing stories from the road on the website he created in her honor. He's hoping to raise attention and money for those living with the disease.

His cross country journey ends on August 16 and he's still waiting to reach his donation goal.

He said the most surprising part of his journey has been learning how the disease affects different people in different ways.

"The progression, it can be so quick for someone and so long for someone else," he said. "With ALS, it's more like you're being trapped inside a body that you can't use anymore, you still have all the brain functions, you still have all the thinking but you can't use it the way you want to."

Before his mother lost the ability to talk and walk, she danced with all three of her sons in a ballroom on her college campus - wedding day experiences she didn't want stolen from them.

"She also wrote notes to us for each milestone, to prepare us for the world and to help us along the way when she couldn't be there, and I think the dance was a similar kind of way," he said.

It's those values that helps keep him going. He's fighting for fewer stolen moments for families.

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