Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009 | 4:16 p.m.
Upstanding citizens will find themselves behind bars Thursday during the annual Muscular Dystrophy Association Lock-up.
The fundraiser has community members herded into a makeshift jail — Milo's Cellars — and asking their friends to bail them out for a good cause.
Boulder City's lockup is one of 10 or 12 throughout the Las Vegas Valley every year that together raise about $400,000, Kristina Forzano, MDA district director, said.
That's part of about $1.4 million the Las Vegas-area MDA raises annually, which pays for clinics, support groups, summer camps and wheelchairs for 455 Southern Nevada residents with Lou Gehrig's disease and 42 other neuromuscular diseases, she said.
The diseases stop muscles from growing and are eventually fatal when the body's biggest muscle, the heart, deteriorates.
Nationally, the money goes to finding medicines that slow the diseases down, Forzano said.
The local office seeks out volunteer jailbirds in every community who ask their friends to donate the MDA before the lock-up date. Normally, the captured have raised their bail before being jailed, but MDA cars pick them up and keep them in one place for fun and for networking.
"It's a benefit to have all the business owners in one place," Forzano said.
To make a donation to MDA, stop by Milo's, 538 Nevada Way, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Feb. 19 or visit mda.org.
Cassie Tomlin can be reached at 948-2073 or [email protected].
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