Hidden Heroes are people who quietly set about doing the right thing; doing whatever they can to make a positive difference in the world around them. This week I want to acknowledge seven individual Hidden Heroes and a corporate one.

Last week I got a call from Don McKinnon who manages the Staples store on Aulds Road. He wanted to know if I could help promote the achievements of three local Special Olympians, Ray Lappalainen and Kristine Cooper who will be competing in the Special Olympics World Summer Games in Shanghai next summer and Chrystal Thompson who has made the BC team that will be competing in the next National Winter Games.

Don’s interest in Special Olympics comes from the Give a Dollar Share a Dream promotion that Staples has organized for the past seven years, a promotion that has raised over $2.5 million for Special Olympics athletes. As most Hidden Heroes do, Don was quick to tell me he was not looking for the Staples name to be mentioned. He just wanted these three local athletes to gain the recognition they deserve.

Kristine will be competing in Swimming at the World Games. She has been working hard at her sport for eighteen years and has excelled at both the provincial and national levels. Her face lights up every time she talks about representing Canada in Shanghai.

Ray Lappalainen will be competing in track events at the Worlds. He hopes to retire a world champion after the games and then make way for a friend to get his chance to compete at the international level. Although his friend is a very good track athlete, Ray has been beating him regularly in years past.

Crystal’s love of performing was obvious the moment she stepped on the ice at the Nanaimo Ice Centre wearing her skating costume but it was only after she got off the ice that the true value of the Special Olympics movement shone forth.

“I love skating,” she told us, “and thanks to skating, I’m much more confident than I used to be and I’m not hard on myself any longer.”

Thanks to the efforts of Sylvia Taylor, another of today’s Hidden Heroes, these three athletes and the several hundred other Special Olympians who live in the Mid Island region have been given the opportunity to be the best they can be both in their various sports and in their day-to-day lives.

After being introduced to the movement on the Lower Mainland, Sylvia was disappointed when she moved to the Mid Island to find that we didn’t have a Special Olympics organization here. She took the first steps to make that happen and she hasn’t stopped since.

It took the commitment of three other individuals to get Special Olympics started back in the early sixties. At that time it was assumed that mentally challenged people had low fitness levels simply because of their mental retardation. Dr. Frank Hayden questioned that assumption and soon proved it wrong. The simple reason was that they were not being given the same opportunities to participate in sports as other children and adults. After much searching to develop funding for a national sports program for the mentally challenged, he met Eunice Kennedy Shriver and the first Special Olympics Games were held in Chicago in 1968. The first Canadian competition was held the next year in Toronto and the movement grew quickly across the country thanks in large part to the unflagging efforts of Harry “Red” Foster, an outstanding sportsman, broadcaster and advertising executive – Hidden Heroes all.

Over forty years ago, one man had an idea and now with help from thousands of others, 1.7 million people around the world are being given the chance to be the best they can be both in their chosen sports and in the rest of their lives.