Colton Meyer is 5-years old and has a disease that eventually will leave him completely blind. Now he's getting a chance to set his sights on something he'll never forget.
Colton was pretty excited when a racecar -- Jeff Gordon's race car -- showed up at Bear Mountain Elementary where his mom is a teacher. But the real excitement came a little bit later when Colton actually rode shotgun for a quick race around the schools parking lot.
Colton has what is called retinitis pigmentosa, and what that means is. "His eyesight is deteriorating it doesn't get better," said Laura Cleverly, Colton's mother. So when a technical rep with DuPont saw a story about Colton on our newscast a few months back he decided to let Colton take a look at something he will most likely always remember.
"The first time you see Colton on TV it just steals your heart and I think the last one I saw was all the mail he was getting and on top of the stack was a picture of Jeff Gordon, his wife and Rick Henderickson the car driver," said George Sweat, with DuPont.
So sweat and his crew decided to bring that picture to life as best as they could, by bringing #24 to Colton to let him see the race car up close. "I was surprised with racecar," Colton said. "It had pictures all over it and numbers and it went really fast."In addition to the racecar ride, Colton also was presented with a hat and some posters.
As if all that wasn't cool enough, that day a plan was put in the works to get Colton to Jeff Gordon's upcoming race in Fontana. There he hung out in the hospitality tent and meet Jeff Gordon, in person!
A giggling 5-year-old Meyer was all smiles because he spent the weekend with his family at the California Speedway in Fontana, not just to watch the race but to meet Jeff Gordon.
"My favorite thing is the hat that he gave to me," said Meyer. When Dupont learned he was a big fan of Jeff Gordon, they arranged for him to get up close and personal. And Meyer now has pictures to prove it. Meyer played a round of thumb wrestling with Gordon himself and received some words of advice from a NASCAR superstar. "I'm gonna remember that he said to eat my vegetables," said Meyer.
From signed hats and t-shirts to toy cars and priceless photos, Meyer has plenty to remember his NASCAR idol by. And if you ask him what he wants to be when he grows up, Meyer says, "a race car driver."
If you'd like to contribute photographs for Colton's scrapbook, please send them here:
For You Colton
PO Box 10511
Bakersfield, CA 93389
