Swimmer Gets Taste of the Big Apple
Alexia Nalewaik swam before she walked. She has swum off the coast of Libya, around Roman ruins that have crumbled into the ocean. She has swum in the San Franciscan harbor, near Alcatraz and under the Golden Gate Bridge. Basically, Nalewaik has been swimming all of her life.
On June 23, the Deloitte & Touche senior consultant and about 30 other people will be swimming the 28.5 miles around Manhattan Island. A long-distance swimmer for the last 11 years, she expects the marathon will take her about nine and a half hours to complete.
"On a swim of that length, you tend to remember the beginning, the end, and if anything interesting happens in the middle," says Nalewaik, 32, adding that for the most part, her brain tends to wander. For a long-distance swim to be valid and considered unassisted by the international swimming association, she is permitted to wear only a cap, goggles, bathing suit, and ear plugs. That means no fins or wet suits.
Her family and close friends are not surprised she's doing the swim in June. "When I announced to a couple of coworkers that I was doing Manhattan Island, they said, 'Have you seen the water? Are you sure you want to do this, because we've seen the water!'"
While the feat itself is an accomplishment, it is even more impressive that Nalewaik is tackling it. She suffers from the arthritis-related autoimmune disease called lupus. She has been diagnosed with various forms of arthritis since 1994.
"I have good days and bad weeks," she says, chuckling. "A lot of it is tied to work and to my schedule. If I have been putting in late nights, crazy client hours, and stressing out all over the place, I find that I do need to slow down." For now, she does not appear to be stopping.
Opening New Avenues for Adoption
When Allan Frank, the president of Answerthink, came to volunteer at the National Adoption Center in the early 1980s, there was still a lack of communication among the state and county adoption professionals who made up the system. Often, a waiting family could be one state away from a needy child and not even know it.
With his computer background, Frank, who then worked for Peat Marwick, helped the center develop a national registry that would connect families with children. The database was put on a time-sharing service that was used by social workers, church groups, and government officials.
"I started to focus on where the future was going and where the technology was heading," says Frank, who has held several positions on the center's board, including president. "I had a dream that we could put kids up on-line. Someday, I told them, everyone will have a computer at home."
The new technology of the '90s came, and Frank helped build the center's Web site (www.adopt.org). Now, people around the country who are looking to adopt can easily search for children who meet their criteria. In the five years since the site as been up, 335 children have been placed as a result, says Carolyn Johnson, the center's executive director.
"Allan's work with us has really helped to revolutionize adoption," says Johnson, an adoptive parent of three children who founded the center in the 1970s. If Frank could not personally give the Philadelphia-based center support, he would loan his staff, she says.
Now, Johnson, three consultants on loan from Answerthink, a group of adoptive parents, and others are working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to develop a new site for taking advantage of the latest technology.
"The Adoption Center has found homes for 14,500 children since we started, and I give credit to Allan for at least half of those kids," Johnson says.
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