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Novato Biz Owner Gets Vintage Oaks to "Light It Up Blue" for Autism Awareness

The mother of an autistic son spearheads a local campaign to generate awareness.

Staggering recent studies have shown that autism afflicts more children than diabetes, cancer and AIDS combined and that one in 50 kids fit somewhere on the autistic spectrum.

For Nicole Hitchcock, the owner of the NH2 Salon in the Vintage Oaks shopping center, those statistics hit home. Her son 8-year-old Ramsey was diagnosed with autism at the age of two.

Determined to increase awareness about the baffling affliction, Hitchcock has convinced Vintage Oaks officials to participate in the “Light It Up Blue” campaign. The shops and parking lots will be emblazoned with blue banners and decorations and Home Depot in her hometown of San Rafael will sell “blue Bulbs” to help fund a global nonprofit agency called Autism Speaks.

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Autism Speaks founded the “Light It Up Blue” campaign a few years ago, successfully engaging the United Nations to join the cause. Last year the Empire State Building was lit up in blue lights.

April 2 is World Autism Awareness Day and April is Autism Awareness Month.

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“This year I am on a quest,” Hitchcock said. “We need to show support for the families and parents who are raising kids on the autism spectrum.”

Hitchcock said she found no resistance from Vintage Oaks. “The center really wanted to work together,” she said, adding that volunteers are growing in number and that the idea is spreading throughout the center.

Hitchcock, who lives in Terra Linda, said she hopes the movement winds its way beyond Vintage Oaks.

Hitchcock said generating awareness about autism is crucial, as it continues to confound most people, especially those who don’t live with it in their own families.

“People without experience don’t know how to behave around someone with autism. They don’t know what questions are or are not appropriate,” Hitchcock said. “A lot of people don’t know what autism is and isn’t.”

She said some people, upon meeting her son for the first time, respond by saying he looks “normal” and that they were expecting to see someone similar to those with severe cases of Down syndrome.

While still providing complexities to researchers, Hitchcock said the basic premise is that those with autism “brains process information differently.”

She hopes more people take the opportunity to learn more about autism — and that more businesses “Light It Up Blue” in April.

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