In 1995, a grassroots, loosely organized group of stroke survivors and their families began to find one another on the Internet. At that time, the Internet was just beginning to become a powerful tool in the hands of ordinary folk. This handful of people was in sharp contrast to the tens of millions of other "ordinary folk" (young, old, rich, poor, parents, grandparents and even children) who had suffered strokes throughout the world, during the decades before 1995. And the numbers have continued to grow unabated, as stroke continues to be the #1 cause of serious disability in many countries and the #2 cause of death in the world.

And, although stroke has happened to so many, few stroke survivors or their families have had availability of local resources for the support and information they have needed. Indeed, many survivors are disabled in ways that do not allow them to leave their homes to seek help.

Thus, in 1995, stroke survivors and caregivers naturally began to look to the Internet to seek out information and community that they could not find elsewhere in their hometowns. Gradually, these people began to post to special-interest bulletin boards on the Web, searching for help, and seeking an end to the isolation they felt. But these groups were very small and often difficult to find—and even moved or canceled as Internet providers (such as AOL, Prodigy and Compuserv) did not consider support for stroke to be of significant enough interest to their memberships.

A very tenacious man—Ed Schomer, a stroke survivor in his 40s—started searching out the many disparate places where stroke-affected people were looking to find help. He gathered up survivors and caregivers wherever he could find them, and started a small group, and proceeded to organize these people into posting e-mails to each other. This group grew by word-of-mouth, and over the past six years, many other groups have grown up out of this effort, and branched off into their own communities-such that thousands of stroke survivors and their loved ones have now been touched by the efforts of Ed, and that small handful of survivors and caregivers who literally started it all in 1995.

SAFE (Stroke Awareness for Everyone, Inc.) seeks to keep alive the values that Ed started in his early efforts—bringing people together who are struggling with stroke, providing support to anyone in need (regardless of age, background, creed or disability), and steering people in the direction of actionable information to deal with this devastating illness. It is SAFE's goal to continue to touch and help such people, while helping to grow awareness for stroke, what it means to live with stroke, and how to prevent stroke from happening to others.