heroes who have dedicated their lives to helping people in need. none of them wear a spandex leotard or cape, at least not while working, not that i m aware of, but they are true heroes. we are live tonight in los angeles and around the world and we have a group of famous folks joining us tonight. they ve generously given their time to share our hero stories with you. some have journeyed to see our honorees. jerry seinfeld, will.i.am. he went to meet one of our heros in wisconsin. my colleague dr. sanjay gupta is streaming live all night with our presenters and honorees. also ice cube, laura dern, christie turlington who went to indonesia. to learn more about one of our heros. if you would like to share these amazing stories with your friends, follow us on facebook, on twitter, use hash tag cnn heroes to bring more attention to these important issues. as i said, we are live tonight. i promise i ll try very hard not to giggle. i laugh like a 13-year-old girl meeting justin b
chris s injury all over again. how are you doing, luis? i m eddie. that s my son, chris. it s all gone in an instant. someone s gone from being so independent and at the prime of his life, now becoming very dependent on some of the basic things, the simplest things that we all take for granted. they can be mad at the world. but i ll go in there to help them just to let them know that they re not alone through this process. never give up that faith, man. this is something that we have to do. we know that this is our purpose. and so we do it. who else you got here? i like to collect sports history. so for me, like, i got some of the older guys like terry bradshaw. got the steel curtains. you know i m not a big fan of the steelers. you know that, right? in all the time i ve been with them, they don t talk at all about themselves and their struggles. they talk about how can they help someone else? how can they support another family? and to me that s what a hero is
tell me just a little bit about gridiron heroes, how it got started. you know, it started after chris suffered a spinal cord injury. it was our last home game. we had to win this game to go to the playoffs. about four or five guys missed the tackle and i made the last touchdo touchdown. along with that, i broke my neck. he just reached his one-year anniversary date of his injury. chris was going through some hard times. he started to shut down on me. depression hit, and i was still in the wheelchair. so just to get him out of the house, i said, let s go to a football game. there was a state championship game. and at that game we ended up witnessing another spinal cord injury. as soon as chris saw that young man being put on that cart, chris turned to me and said, dad, we ve got to go help him. i know what he s going to go through. you know what the family s going to go through. that was the inspiration behind starting grid iron heroes. gridiron heroes, we provide