A Brazilian Doctor Helped a Paralyzed Man Miraculously Kick Off the World Cup. This Is the Story of the Writer Who Found Them.

Last month, Charles Bethea launched our Writer Redux series by describing his experience interviewing a reclusive billionaire and profiling the unproven 25-year-old CEO of Lonely Planet. This month, Danielle Elliot, a freelancer and TV producer who has contributed to ESPN, CBS News, and Grantland, has taken the baton.

On May 28, Grantland published Elliot’s longform feature “The Dream Kickoff,” about Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, a Brazilian scientist who is trying to help paralyzed patients walk with an exoskeleton. The ultimate goal was for one of the patients to kick a soccer ball at the opening ceremony of the World Cup, a goal which came true. A few weeks later, Elliot is here to tell us about her journey to Sao Paolo, pitching Grantland, getting hold of the mercurial doctor, and reporting on the project’s incredible science.

—

A paralyzed teenager was going to kick off the World Cup. When I first read that in January, I was intrigued—and skeptical. I’d been asked to write a short post about the kickoff for CBSNews.com, but I didn’t think the Reuters wire story was accurately describing it. A Google search brought me to a bizarre semi-animated video that showed a monkey and a robot walking on a treadmill.

I emailed the Duke lab mentioned in the video, and a response came through minutes later. The lab’s administrative manager asked for a quick call to discuss my story. An hour later, I was dialing a Brazilian cell phone number for Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, the man behind the Walk Again Project. Our 10-minute conversation was enough for me to verify that the science was legitimate and the man behind it was quite a character. For the past 18 months, Nicolelis had been leading the design of a mind-controlled exoskeleton that allows paralyzed individuals to walk. He planned to introduce it during the opening ceremony of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil by having a paralyzed Brazilian walk across the field and kick a soccer ball. There were already eight paralyzed people training with the exoskeleton at a makeshift lab in Sao Paulo. Despite the fascinating science, Nicolelis seemed more interested in talking about soccer. He’d always dreamed about playing in the World Cup—he’s from Brazil—and this would at least give him a chance to be on the pitch. I wrote up the short post and moved on.

Over the next two weeks, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about the story. Nicolelis’s passion for the project was intoxicating. I reached out to the lab to see if I could interview him in person. He’d only be in America for one week, but he planned to fit me in for an hour on February 28. That gave me about six weeks to land a pitch. Given Nicolelis’s passion for soccer—he explained the science behind brain-machine interfaces and exoskeletons by relating it to Brazil’s 1970 World Cup-winning soccer team—I knew I wanted to focus on the sports element of the story as much as possible.

On January 13, I pitched a broadcast piece to a contact at ESPN—my background is in TV features. I still hadn’t decided where to pitch a written piece. By chance, I had a writer friend staying with me that week, and she mentioned Grantland. I did a little reading and came across a piece that briefly described Grantland’s editing process. It seemed thorough, which is a luxury in the digital freelance world. I checked out the masthead posted right on the site, and that’s where I found Rafe Bartholomew.

After tracking down Rafe’s email on his personal website, I pitched a multimedia piece, gave a brief synopsis of the story I planned to tell, and closed with links to previous work. I also mentioned my upcoming interview with Nicolelis.

Three days later, Rafe responded. It was the middle of Super Bowl week, so he asked me to wait for him to have a chance to discuss it with other editors once the (other) football craziness died down. When I followed up, he immediately set up a call. He asked me to submit between 3,000 and 5,000 words. We talked about possible multimedia elements, but decided to stick with text. They didn’t have a budget to cover travel, but I didn’t mind, because they were paying me well beyond what I’d previously earned for web work. As soon as we hung up, I booked a flight to Duke and planned to fly out on the same day in order to avoid paying for a hotel.

The next two weeks were a crash-course in neuroplasticity and its connection to the exoskeleton. I finished reading Nicolelis’s book on the short flight from New York to Raleigh-Durham, which helped me narrow my list of questions. When I landed, I had less than an hour to rent a car and drive 40 miles to Duke. I got there on time, but Nicolelis had yet to arrive. He strolled in more than an hour later—he was apologetic—and grabbed a bottle of Coke from the mini-fridge in his office. That was his breakfast. The interview went on for more than four hours, with him graciously canceling appointments throughout the day.

As we spoke, I decided I absolutely had to go to Brazil to see the exoskeleton in person. He agreed, adding he hoped to have clearance for reporters to speak to the people training on the exoskeleton by the end of March. Thus far, the Brazilian government was sticking to its policy of not letting media talk to patients during clinical trials, for privacy reasons.

I must’ve looked up flights to Brazil 100 times, but I kept stalling while waiting on the clearance to interview the patients. If that had been granted, I could have traveled with a camera crew. Sometime that month, Nicolelis stopped responded to emails, and eventually, I gave up on the possibility of filming. I booked a flight for April 29 using my own frequent flier miles.

An administrator sent a hotel recommendation, but never an address for the lab (it’s possible she didn’t have one). I boarded the flight with little idea of where I was going. I was also struggling with how to incorporate Nicolelis’s dedication to science education into the narrative. In early drafts, it seemed tangential. The young man sitting next to me on the flight solved this puzzle before we even took off. He’d heard of Nicolelis, thought his work was inspiring, and felt the Brazilian government was wasting money on the World Cup—money that would’ve been better spent on education. Just like that, he’d hit on three points I needed to cover. For a few hours, I felt like everything was falling into place.

The excitement was short-lived. An hour after I checked into the hotel, I called Nicolelis. He told me the lab was near the hotel and that I should call him back in a few hours. And so, I spent my first day in Brazil in a hotel room, doing research and trying not to worry. That day, I also received an email from the PR team working with the project—this was the first I heard of any PR team: “We have just received your email about the interview with Professor Nicolelis and we have some doubts about your request, because we didn’t arrange an agenda for this. … Have you come to Brazil just for this interview?”

Rather than panicking, I asked for an address. Miraculously, I got one. Sort of. I was told the lab had no number, but I should look for a glass door and a white wall next to a house numbered 58. That was enough for me. When Nicolelis saw me in the hallway of the lab, he didn’t smile. He was legitimately puzzled how I’d found it—not that he was trying to be rude. He is just incredibly cautious with outsiders while patients are in the lab.

Despite my best efforts, I was never allowed in the room while patients used the exoskeleton. He did let me into another room, where I watched a patient use a device similar to the exoskeleton. It was one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever seen—a paralyzed man was walking. That was really the only time I spent with any of the patients, as I followed Nicolelis’s wishes (and the government’s rule) to not speak to them.

One morning, I walked up to the building as two patients were arriving. Afraid Nicolelis would think I was trying to talk to them, I turned and walked around the block a few times. Another night, a patient and I sat next to each other in the hall. He ate a brownie; I looked at my notes. It was so hard to stay silent, but I appreciated the access I’d been granted and did not want to overstep it.

Afterward, I spent my weekend in Brazil holed up in my room, fighting off a cold and hammering out the story. I also tried to set up an interview with the police for a separate assignment about World Cup security for Popular Mechanics, which could’ve covered the cost of my travel, but it never panned out.

Finally, on Monday, I stopped by the lab to try out the avatar goggles and see the sensory shirt. Using the goggles is the first step patients take when learning to use the exoskeleton. Wearing them, you see a pair of avatar legs where your own should be. When you think about walking, they move. It feels like you’re looking at your own legs, and that first-hand experience really helped me understand the exoskeleton.

I then caught a taxi from the lab to the airport, and spent the entire return flight writing. By the time I landed, I was incredibly close to finishing a draft. I stopped at a coffee shop rather than going home, spent another two hours writing, and submitted a 6,560-word draft. Then I slept for what felt like two days.

After two painless rounds of edits, the final piece came in at just over 6,000 words. Keeping my original structure, Rafe did some routine tightening, moved a few details around, asked me to clarify a few points, and noted a couple of places that needed more reflection—like the moment I watched the patient walking on the simulator.

A major aspect left out of the final piece is how much time I spent with the younger researchers, who were a wonderful group and lived together in what they jokingly called the “Walk Again Frat House.” Adding their individual stories wasn’t necessary to the piece, but without them, I never would’ve understood the exoskeleton, or Nicolelis, as well as I did.

All together, I spent about $1,100 and 66,000 Delta miles in order to report this story. Grantland would have published the pre-Brazil version, and I could have pocketed my full paycheck, but I knew from Nicolelis that no other American journalists were visiting his Sao Paulo lab, and, in the end, I think the experience was worth every penny.

It was fun to track the response to the story once it went live, but nothing was as much fun as watching Juliano Pinto, a 29-year-old man paralyzed in a car accident, whom I’d briefly met in the Sao Paulo lab, successfully control the exoskeleton during the opening ceremony. He took a few steps near the sideline and kicked the ball, thereby officially kicking off the World Cup.