Racing to end Alzheimer’s
Written by Melani Morose Edelstein | Photographed by Brenda Cash
The full-throttle race to end Alzheimer’s disease is taking place around the globe thanks in no small part to the fuel it’s getting from the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Phil and Mimi Frengs, residents of PV Estates since 1984, raised and educated their three children in their beloved community. Originally from Mississippi, Mimi’s family moved to California when she was five years old. Phil’s family is from Northern California. They met at UCLA and fell in love. Life led them to Palos Verdes, where Phil runs Legistics, Inc., a successful company providing document managed services to legal firms worldwide.
“It’s been a charmed life. Then I felt like I should do more. I wanted to do some charitable work, so I became passionate about doing other things.”
When, like Frengs, you reach a point in business that you no longer need to spend every day growing your career and seeking new clients, you decide to step back and redirect your life towards other things.
An active community member, Phil Frengs has served on the board of directors of the Palos Verdes Golf Club, serving one year as president. He spent 20 years on the PV Estates Homes Association board of directors. He was on the Southern California Golf Association’s Foundation board, where he was instrumental to help students through their scholarship program, and eventually became the Foundation’s president.
“I have had a variety of volunteer and philanthropic opportunities through the years, which have been very satisfying.,” he says humbly.
Life was happily humming along for the Frengs when Mimi started forgetting things and began exhibiting frighteningly uncharacteristic behaviors. An extended medical odyssey took the couple to the specialists at UCLA, where they received the dreaded diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s. Mimi was just 60 years old at the time.
The insidious disease affects more than six million Americans and ravishes the lives of more than 50 million people worldwide. There are many people and organizations helping researchers wage this war on Alzheimer’s. When the battle came to PV and altered the life of Phil Frengs, he raced to the starting line to do his part.
“When Mimi was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, I was devastated. I started Racing to End Alzheimer’s to channel my emotions into something that might help others who were having similar experiences.”
Phil, an avid golfer, has always been a fan of auto sports. Years ago, on the links at Pebble Beach, he and his caddy Nick Galante formed a close friendship which eventually led Phil to sponsoring Nick’s racing dreams.
“When Mimi was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, I was devastated. I started Racing to End Alzheimer’s as a way to channel my emotions into something that might help others who were having similar experiences.”
“So here we are a dozen years later, now Nick drives in the IMSA’s Michelin Pilot Challenge. He drives against world-class drivers. He is a world-class driver! So, after he trained in Sonoma at the Jim Russell School, he wanted to race sports cars, which was a step up for him and the much bigger financial commitment. So, the first couple of years, I could afford to sponsor two to four out of 10 races per season, and so he’s progressed. After several years we committed to full season rides. My company Legistics is the sponsor on the car, and we’re successfully competing, winning two championships in 2016 and 2017. Then suddenly, Mimi gets diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”
Their 30-year-old entrepreneur son Peter is happy to spend time with his mom. “He’s got his small business and not committed to anything else yet, so it’s great he lives with us. Having him home with me is great for me and it’s great for him to be there, too. I think he wants to be there more than to be anywhere else right now.”
The first few years, Phil spent a lot of time with Mimi. “I stopped going to work except for maybe one day a week. I was her primary caregiver. There were things she could do for herself at first. She could no longer drive, and she had difficulty making decisions. I sort of became her shadow. And we did that for a couple of years, and then I hired somebody who could come and take care of Mimi on race weekends. That way, I could still go to the races. I would just shorten up my trip. I would literally fly in late the night before, watch the race and fly back out and get home.”
At one of those races, Phil was looking around, and it occurred to him that people were paying big money to put their company’s name on race cars. “That’s what financially fuels racing, right? So, I thought, wait a minute. What if we put the names of people with Alzheimer’s on the cars, we could really do something?”
Consequently, the non-profit Racing to End Alzheimer’s Foundation was born. For a donation of $250, Frengs’ organization replaces those big business logos with the names and hometowns of people who are facing Alzheimer’s and dementia or those who have passed on because of ALZ. They have been doing this since 2017 and match every donation dollar for dollar.
“The 2022 race season is underway, and now’s the time to add your loved one’s name and hometown to our new Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS Clubsport,” Frengs reminds. “You will be able to see them proudly displayed the remaining 8 races this season, and it’s a great way to honor them and fight Alzheimer’s disease at the same time.”
Recently they have started putting names on cars at the beginning, and we keep adding names all the way along. “We will have more than 65 names on the car for our first race of this season, and we are so glad. After we picked car number 22, we decided we wanted to put 222 names on the car by the end of the race season. Names and hometowns are applied to the body of the #22., and stays on for the whole race season. We send the donor bracelets so that they can all wear a bracelet with their loved one’s name on it. It’s sort of a little package. We raise about $100,000 a year, and we split it between UCLA’s Alzheimers and Dementia Care Program and the Nantz National Alzheimer’s Center at Houston Methodist Hospital.”
Adding names to cars is tremendous, but Frengs says it can be a slow process, and there are only so many names that can go on the cars, so he’d like to see more matching partners. He envisions multiple matching partners, so every gift goes from $250 to $500 to $1000. If they get 222 names by the end of the season, they will reach $222,000, an extraordinary gift to the institutions to both fund the care and to fund the cure.
It is essential to point out that the Racing to End Alzheimer’s budget is entirely funded by Legistics, Frengs’ company. All the foundation costs are paid by Legistics so that no donor money is used for overhead administration and to ensure one hundred percent of all donations go work, as we are racing to end Alzheimer’s.
Frengs is proud of the work Racing to End Alzheimer’s is doing. The organization’s easy, unique visible contribution toward the cure for the degenerative brain disease brings new hope and much-needed help supporting researchers as they progress in understanding the disease, formulating new treatments and diagnostics, and providing compassionate support for overwhelmed caregivers.
Caregivers are the cornerstone of a family’s peace of mind. “For Mimi, our caregivers do a great job. Mimi dresses every day. There’s no sitting around in a robe or anything, you know, we go through the motions, and they make it like fun and games,” says Frengs, always humbly honoring and championing those who work hard to make a difference in the lives of others.
