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VIDEO: Classic Cars And New Medical Technology Cruise Shoreline

Car enthusiasts help raise money to develop technology that could allow paralyzed to people walk again.

After breaking several vertebrae and sustaining injuries throughout his body when a parachuting mission went awry during his career in the Army, Monty Reed got word from doctors that he would never walk again.

Now, more than two decades later and after years of physical therapy, Reed has proven his doctors wrong. And during his rehabilitation, he has made it his life’s mission to find a way to help other paraplegics regain the ability to walk.

Enter the Lifesuit: a robotic contraption that uses compressed air to aid the wearer in walking—and even climbing stairs.

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Inspiration for Reed’s suit came not from graduate studies at a medical university or reading scientific journals but from science fiction—Robert A. Heinlein, to be precise. Reed said he got the idea for a rehabilitation suit that could perform the act of walking from Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers,” in which soldiers wear robotic suits to help carry heavy gear.

After his accident, Reed began studying robotics at North Seattle Community College and spent thousands of dollars from his own pocket to develop the suit, which is now in its 14th prototype.

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Reed went on to found They Shall Walk, a nonprofit that aims to make the Lifesuit—or Rehab Suit, as it’s sometimes called—a reality for disabled people.

“If you’re paralyzed in this country, the funding typically allows for only one physical therapy session per month,” Reed said. “If you can’t move your legs, how are you going to exercise them? The idea for the robot suit is that it will move a patient and they will get passive exercise. When the machine moves their legs, their muscles experience exercise; their bones bear weight, so it maintains bone density and muscle mass.”

They Shall Walk held a car show in the Shoreline Sears parking lot Saturday, which brought in car enthusiasts from throughout the Puget Sound who showed off their cars in the clear, 60-degree weather.

Reed said he wanted to hold a fundraiser after receiving an email from a young paraplegic in Singapore who considered attempting suicide. Reed said the boy had a change of heart when he heard about the suit on the Internet—something Reed said motivated him to push his cause even harder.

They Shall Walk held a car show in October, and, due to popular demand, decided to hold an even larger one again in the spring.

Click the video to right to see the Lifesuit in action and to check out some of the cars that made it to the show.

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