Former NFL Player, Los Angeles Firefighter Battles ALS

Former Los Angeles firefighter and NFL player Eric Stevens, diagnosed with ALS in 2019, is helping raise money in hopes of finding a cure.

By Michael Hixon

Source The Beach Reporter, Manhattan Beach, CA (TNS)

Sept. 19, 2025

7 min read

After former Los Angeles firefighter and NFL player Eric Stevens (seen in this 2020 photo) was diagnosed with ALS, he and his wife began to raise money to support those who have also been diagnosed.

Just a month after Eric and Amanda Stevens were married on July 27, 2019, what was the happiest time of their lives, turned into a nightmare.

Eric, a 29-year-old former National Football League (NFL) player and firefighter, was diagnosed with the incurable Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

"He'd been having symptoms like left-hand weakness, a little bit of slurred speech, some fasciculations or twitching in his arms, but didn't think much of it," Amanda said. "He just thought like maybe an old football injury, or just fatigue from being a fireman."

When they returned home from their honeymoon, however, the systems became worse — and he could not put off seeing a neurologist.

"It takes a very long time to get diagnosed just because there's not one test that says you have ALS," Amanda said in a recent interview at their San Pedro home. "It's more like them ruling out everything else."

When Eric was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, it "obviously rocked our world in the worst way possible," Amanda said.

"Here we are, about to start our life together," she added, "and then we got hit with, 'We only have two to five years to live.'"

But soon, the community, friends and family came out in force to support the Stevens family in November 2019 with the "Fight for Hope" fundraiser at the Seaside Lagoon in Redondo Beach, which was attended by more than 4,000 people and helped raise nearly $500,000 for families battling the "extremely expensive disease."

"Living with ALS for over six years hasn't been easy, but the love, encouragement and support I've felt from this community has carried me through some of my toughest days," Eric said in an email. "You've shown me that I'm not walking this road alone, and that means more than words can ever say. Thank you for fighting alongside me!"

Eric's story went viral, including support from "The Ellen DeGeneres Show."

In 2021, the couple formed the axeALS Foundation, which will host the "AxeALS Beach Fest and Cornhole Tournament" at Seaside Lagoon from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Oct. 18.

The nonprofit will also host its annual golf tournament fundraiser on Oct. 27 at the Virginia Country Club in Long Beach.

"Not only do you have equipment, wheelchairs all over the house, breathing machines, we had to redo our bathroom," Amanda said about the expense of the disease. "You have to get accessible vehicles, things like that, so it's just extremely expensive.

"Then you're trying everything you can, because there's no cure," she added. "There's not a medicine that's going to help. So you're trying everything experimental that's not covered by insurance."

The foundation has raised more than $2 million since it was founded in 2021, Amanda said.

The money raised has helped more than 10 ALS families with grants that help pay for things like accessible vehicles and bathroom renovations; axeALS has also given more than $150,000 to help other families.

"We helped one ALS patient who needed to be transferred from one state to another," Amanda said. "He can't fly commercially due to his paralysis."

So axeALS helped pay for him to travel from his parents house in Connecticut to his home in Mississippi for the summer, Amanda said.

The foundation is also in its third and final year of a partnership with the Healy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, which established an "Expanded Access Protocol" program for ALS patients at UC Irvine. This allowed patients to get access to experimental therapies that are stuck in clinical trials.

The program started with an axeALS gift of $486,000, Amandas said — $162,000 a year for three years. The program gave 30 ALS patients access to treatment over those three years.

"We've fought for just patient access to treatment, because the doctors tell you there's nothing you can do," Amanda said. "And he wasn't going to take that for an answer. He was going to fight with everything that he has, and for the kids, for me, for just the whole ALS community."

ALS is famously named Lou Gehrig's disease after the legendary New York Yankees first baseman, who was diagnosed with ALS in 1939 and died two years later at 37 years old.

ALS is a "nervous system disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord," according to the Mayo Clinic.

It has no known cure.

Around 10% or fewer of cases are determined to be genetic, but in Eric's case, it's "sporadic," with no known cause, Amanda said. For Eric, the diagnosis was devastating.

"We think that him being a firefighter, and he's exposed to all these toxic chemicals, he's breathing in diesel fumes, exposed to heavy metals, we can think that that probably had something to do with it," Amanda said. "Maybe football or some head trauma from football. The doctors don't know. They can't tell us."

Eric played fullback and was a star at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School. He played college football at Berkeley, where he met Amanda, who was a soccer player.

He signed with the Los Angeles Rams as an undrafted free agent in 2013, but his pro career ended a few months later when he was released.

His career as a Los Angeles city firefighter began in 2015.

Six years after he was diagnosed, Eric has "already outlived the expectancy that the doctors gave us," his wife said.

Those diagnosed with ALS seem to be getting younger, Amanda said, and they know firemen, surfers, football players, police officers and veterans who are being diagnosed at a young age.

It "doesn't discriminate," Eric, who turns 36 on Oct. 1, said through strained speech.

Losing the ability to speak, as well as not being able to breath or eat on your own, are some of the life-changing and life-threatening impacts of the disease.

Clinical trials could be the key to finding a cure, Amanda said, but they can be costly and they have "tried everything under the sun," including, most recently, t-cell transfusions at UC Irvine.

"The idea is for it to help fight inflammation in his body," Amanda said, "kind of trigger his immune system to kick in and start fighting whatever's going on in there."

Eric is halfway through the treatments but "so far, he hasn't noticed any improvements," Amanda said. But the couple remain hopeful.

With two children — 4-year old daughter Peyton Stevens and 1-year-old son Dean — their goal is to "turn it from terminal to treatable," Amanda said.

"But we just need more attention, more funds, more awareness for ALS," Amanda said. " Maybe with AI now, that can help move things along. We try to stay hopeful. We try to take it one day at a time and just have fun at home with our family. And these two (Peyton and Dean) have obviously brought so much joy, and I think it's the reason why he gets up every morning."

Amanda said they hope to exceed the grassroots efforts that began in 2019 with the Cornhole Tournament on Oct. 18, which features live music, food and drinks, and a silent auction.

While they want to raise as much money as possible for fighting ALS, a portion of the proceeds will also benefit the Widows, Orphans & Disabled Firefighter's Fund in Los Angeles.

"We had so much momentum because it was planned in such a short amount of time," Amanda said of the 2019 event. "His diagnosis was brand new. It shocked the whole community. We had a lot of momentum, so we're hoping for that same outcome this time."

For more information, visit axeals.org.

Originally Published: September 18, 2025 at 6:00 AM PDT