DESIRE TO HELP FRIEND GREW INTO CAMPAIGN FOR MANY; FULL EFFORT PROVIDES SOME RELIEF FROM AUTISM.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

The kid made the cover of Newsweek magazine back in 1974 when he was 6 years old. ``The Troubled Child,'' he was called.

The first poster child for this disorder none of us understood - this nightmare called autism.

Young children screaming every time their parents wanted to hug or touch them - unable to speak a coherent word or play with other children. Kids who would sit for hours rocking back and forth, as if living in their own world. They were.

The areas of their brain that controlled emotional, social and language development were under attack, and these poor kids were helpless to do anything about it.

So was the entire medical establishment, which had no clue on how to fight back.

``In those days, 95 percent of autistic kids wound up in the back ward of a hospital,'' Harvey Lapin said Wednesday, watching his son make the rounds of the parking lot at the Northridge medical building where Harvey has his dental practice.

The troubled child is 29 now, and three hours a day, five days a week, Shawn Lapin works as the parking attendant here - a long way from being a patient in a back ward somewhere.

Shawn still cannot talk, but he can communicate. If somebody parks illegally in his parking lot, he hands them a card that says the reason he isn't talking is because he has autism.

Now, please, move your car, the card reads. It's parked illegally.

They always do, Harvey Lapin says. Without a peep of protest.

They became close friends back in the mid-1970s when they began practicing dentistry in the same medical building on Roscoe Boulevard - Lee Logan, the orthodontist, and Harvey Lapin, the general dentist.

They talked about their careers, their lives, their families. It didn't take Lee long to crack through the facade, the brave front Harvey was putting up in public - smiling good naturedly on the outside, hurting on the inside.

``I could see the heartache he was going through with Shawn,'' Lee said Wednesday. ``One day I asked him if there was anything I could do to help.''

There was. Harvey had been thinking of new ways to raise money for the Autism Society of Los Angeles so it could help fund medical research seeking a cure for autism.

A patient had mentioned the success her son's school was having with jog-a-thons, in which students, with financial pledges from sponsors, run or walk laps around the track.

Harvey was thinking of doing the same thing as a fund-raiser for his chapter. Would his friend be willing to help, maybe jog a few laps and get a few sponsors to pledge a few bucks?

It was like asking Michael Jordan if he could take a few laps up and down the court, score a few points, make a few steals.

Are you kidding? In his sleep. No sweat.

``From minute one, Lee got into it for us, sending letters out to all his friends and colleagues in the dental profession, and enlisting the aid of his staff,'' Harvey said.

In the past 18 years, since that first jog-a-thon for autism research, Lee Logan single-handedly has been responsible for bringing in the lion's share of the pledges to the Autism Society of L.A. - from 35 percent to 40 percent of all the jog-a-thon pledges every year.

Last year, it was $8,000 he collected for jogging 25 laps, Harvey said.

``Lee has a six-page computer readout with the names of at least 200 people who make pledges for every lap he jogs every year,'' Harvey said of his old friend who wants no part of this recognition.

The real recognition should go to the autism society, Lee says - to all the good work it's doing for young families out there who are now facing the same heartache and fears his friend Harvey was facing 25 years ago.

It should go to the people who pledge the money for him to jog, because without their generosity he would have failed in this mission to help his friend.

It should go to the medical researchers working hard to make all `these pledges and laps mean something real in the future - mean a cure.

But, most of all, Lee Logan says, the real recognition should go to the young man working down in the parking lot.

The first poster child for all the troubled children.

For information on the jog-a-thon scheduled for June 14, call Toby Arenberg at the Autism Society of L.A. at [phone].

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Photo

PHOTO Shawn Logan's struggle with autism moved his father, Harvey, right, and Lee Logan, left, to start a successful fund-raising campaign for research into the condition.

Hans Gutknecht/Daily News