Volunteer rises above handicap to raise money for Guadalupe shrine

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Volunteer rises above handicap to raise money for Guadalupe shrine - LaCrosse Tribune
By Mike Tighe
http://lacrossetribune.com/news/local/volunteer-rises-above-handicap-to-raise-money-for-guadalupe-shrine/article_7cfed356-b6c9-11e2-bc52-001a4bcf887a.html

Christopher Pundzak refuses to let his cerebral palsy hold him back from two of his favorite pursuits: working with computers at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and bicycling.

He soon will combine both in a statewide trek on his three-wheel recumbent bike to raise money for the Marian shrine in south La Crosse.

"I always wanted to ride a bike for a good cause," the 26-year-old La Crosse man said. "I'm trying to raise $1,000 for the shrine, and none for myself."

His pilgrimage of nearly 200 miles will start June 18 at the National Shrine of Mary Help of Christians at Holy Hill near Milwaukee. He plans to log about 50 miles a day to finish at Our Lady of Guadalupe four days later.

The shrine became his cause after he volunteered for maintenance work there last year and soon became its unofficial computer tech.

"I worked my way up from maintenance to computers," he said with broad grin.

"I saw they were having some problems, and I wanted to get to the root of those problems," he said. "I like to think as a programmer, so if it doesn't do something right, I like to make it right."

Pundzak said he developed his computer skills in classes at Western Technical College and by teaching himself.

"I try to override my handicap as much as I can by pushing myself," he said. "If somebody tells me I can't do something because of my handicap, I try to do it."

He is preparing to push himself on the ride by bicycling 50 miles a weekend to get in shape, in addition to his daily three-mile ride to and from his apartment to the shrine. He plans to stay in homes along the route.

Being a bike-riding computer geek seemed unlikely after Pundzak was born during an emergency Caesarean section at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Neb., where his dad, Matt, was stationed.

"The neurosurgeon told his father and me that he had almost no dense gray matter," recalls Pundzak's mother, Cecile Gregory. "Basically, he would not be able to do anything."

Even though the doctor later hedged on his diagnosis, Pundzak developed slowly, Gregory said.

"Nothing was normal," she said. "He couldn't crawl, he couldn't roll over. It's your greatest fear as a parent. They figured it was because he lost oxygen at birth."

Despite extensive tests, his cerebral palsy — a brain abnormality that affects muscle movement and motor skills — wasn't detected until he was nearly 5 years old, she said.

Even then, he exhibited a knack for computers, playing Pac Man on computers by age 5.

Gregory, who became a single mom after she and his father, Matt Pundzak, were divorced, said his dad gave him a computer and always has made sure he had upgraded equipment.

His father, now retired from the military and working for a technology firm in Virginia, "was the inspiration for his computer work," Gregory said.

When Pundzak was 7, Gregory and her son moved to rural Sparta to be near family members, she said. "He has a lot of cousins and uncles and aunts for support.

"We are close because I raised him alone," she said.

So close that, when she married Kurt Gregory six years ago, "Christopher gave me away. We've been down many roads."

She described his bicycle pilgrimage as a "dream come true because he's tried to coordinate rides. I think it's phenomenal, the strategizing he's doing.

"He's found a wonderful niche at the shrine. He wanted to be at a place where he could be close to his faith," said Gregory, who is liturgy and music director at St. Albert the Great Parish in Sun Prairie, Wis.

Leif Arvidson, the Guadalupe shrine's executive director, marvels at Pundzak's enthusiasm and IT wizardry with the facility's 17 computers. The shrine doesn't have an IT department and taps a computer services firm for major problems.

"Now that Christopher is here, we go to him first," Arvidson said.

Pundzak himself said he sometimes becomes frustrated, "when I cannot think correctly enough and I need to get faster."

His mom acknowledged as much:"Sometimes, he'll say, 'Mom, I just want to be normal. I tell him I'm handicapped, and we're all handicapped, that his is just move obvious. But that brings people to God very quickly."

Christopher Pundzak has cerebral palsy and volunteers at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe is going to bike across the state to raise money for the shrine.

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Good for him