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Advocate Profiles - Leslie Bishop Franco

At 56, Leslie Bishop Franco's mother, Darlene, was a full-time medical social worker and a deacon in her church. An avid tennis player and golfer, she also loved to travel.

Then she was diagnosed with younger-onset Alzheimer's disease.

"My mom was struck by Alzheimer's in the prime of her life," said Leslie from her home in Oakland, Calif. "It affected her physically as well as cognitively. She lost the ability to walk, talk, eat, drink and, in time, recognize her loved ones."

The fact that Darlene was diagnosed with Alzheimer's while she was living such a full, active life was difficult enough for her family to accept. But her being unable to know her five grandsons (three of them Leslie's) was the cruelest blow.

"Most upsetting to me," Leslie said, "was that (when she was diagnosed) she had just become a grandmother for the first time to my twins. Alzheimer's robbed my mother - and all of our boys - of the grandmother experience."

Darlene passed away in 2006, but a year earlier, while feeling overwhelmed and powerless watching Alzheimer's consume her mother, Leslie turned her despair into action. Director of gift planning for Oakland's Children's Hospital & Research Center Foundation, she became an Alzheimer advocate and has made the cross-country trek to Washington, D.C., three times to attend the Alzheimer's Association Public Policy Forum. She is also the chair of the Alzheimer's Association Northern California and Northern Nevada Chapter's public policy and advocacy committee and has testified before state legislators in California on the importance of increased Alzheimer research funding.

At each stop on her advocacy journey, Leslie shares her mother's story and her family's experience with Alzheimer's.

"Although I was powerless in my mother's personal struggle with Alzheimer's, I feel empowered by my advocacy work," Leslie said. "I'm fighting this disease to honor my mother's memory and to help create a world without Alzheimer's for my boys."