ALS ice bucket challenge ‘balloons’ up in Carson City

The ice bucket challenge for fundraising to help combat ALS takes on a drought-induced twist Sunday at Butler Meats in Carson City.

David Theiss of Butler Meats in Frontier Plaza, whose wife Susan has the disease called Amyomorphic Lateral Sclerosis, said he expects 200 to show for an ice bucket challenge event using water filled balloons rather than buckets to control the amount of water involved. He said that nod toward conservation takes into account the four-year drought.

“Raining hope on a cure for ALS” is what Theiss is calling the event. His Butler Meats is located at 1909 N. Carson St.

“We decided to scale it down,” he said regarding the drought recognition, but in another way he’s scaling it up. That is by having challenged three large places with employees in Carson City to follow his lead.

Theiss said he has challenged folks at Carson Tahoe Hospital, Western Nevada College and the Nevada Department of Transportation to have ice challenge dousings as well. He said employees and others associated those places would do their own events if they accept the challenge.

Theiss said in 2014 there was $240 million raised by ice bucket challenges everywhere to help combat ALS, a significant amount he added has helped lead to a research breakthrough. The disease, also known informally as Lou Gehrig’s disease because it felled the famed New York Yankees’ first baseman in the last century, requires more research to move beyond a breakthrough, according to Theiss and others.

The ALS Association website, which features photos of various ice bucket challenge participants, says there’s going to be such challenges every August until there’s a cure for the disease.