A Raleigh woman who has lived with ALS for 12 years is racing against a December deadline to gather 500 signatures for a new pickleball-themed North Carolina license plate that would fund research into the disease. Andrea Peet, 45, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2014 and now needs those pre-paid sign-ups before state lawmakers can even consider authorizing the plate for production.
According to WRAL, Peet and Timothy Weiss, who met her at Pinpoint Raleigh in 2025, are in the early phases of the license plate project. Weiss, who volunteers with the Team Drea Foundation, told the station that hitting 500 registrations would be the first step, and that he would handle the rest from there. Under North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles guidelines, establishing any new specialty plate category requires legislative authorization from the General Assembly plus at least 500 pre-paid applications submitted within statutory deadlines before the state can produce and issue it.
A Diagnosis That Upended an Athlete's Life
Peet was originally given two to five years to live after her ALS diagnosis, per the same WRAL report, but she is now among the roughly 10 percent of people with ALS who live longer than a decade. Before the disease took hold, Peet was an urban planner and triathlete in Washington, D.C., who went from finishing a 70.3-mile Half Ironman to walking with a cane in less than eight months, according to Cary Magazine. ALS is a progressive neuromuscular disease that can take away a person's ability to walk and talk, and it has no known cure.
Rather than retreat from athletic life, Peet took up marathon racing on a recumbent tricycle. She completed a marathon in all 50 states in May 2022, finishing at the Prince of Wales Island Marathon in Alaska, according to ABC World News Tonight, which reported she began the challenge at the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach. Her journey was later documented in the feature film Go On, Be Brave, which premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in February 2023 after filmmakers spent nearly four years following her across the country. Peet also co-authored a memoir, Hope Fights Back: Fifty Marathons and a Life-or-Death Race Against ALS, published by Pegasus Books that same September.
Building on a Decade of Grassroots Fundraising
Peet has 12 swallow tattoos, one for each year she has lived with ALS, and WRAL reports she remains dedicated to finding a cure for the disease. She and her husband, David Peet, founded the Team Drea Foundation in 2016, and the 501(c)(3) nonprofit has since raised more than $1 million for ALS research organizations, with proceeds supporting institutions such as the ALS Therapy Development Institute and the Duke ALS Clinic.
Local support for that mission runs deep in Raleigh. The Sola Hot Mini 5K, an annual race organized by Sola Coffee Cafe in honor of co-founder Jeanne Luther, who died of ALS in 2022, has raised $984,000 over seven years and expects to cross the $1 million mark at its race on September 12. The Team Drea Foundation also provides a way for supporters to request the proposed plate directly through its Acing ALS page, and it would receive whatever remains of each $30 fee after the state's cut.
How the Plate Fee Would Be Split
Under the proposal, North Carolina would collect $10 from each $30 plate sold, following the same fee structure the state already uses for its existing ALS specialty plate, which channels $20 of its $30 fee directly to ALS United North Carolina for research and local patient programs. Peet's pickleball design would function as a companion offering rather than a replacement, giving supporters of the sport a second way to back ALS causes through their vehicle registration.
Nationally, ALS remains a small but devastating diagnosis pool. CDC National ALS Registry data updated in 2026 projects that roughly 34,720 people in the United States will be living with the disease this year, based on a national prevalence rate of 5.2 per 100,000 people recorded in prior surveys. Peet has said she wants the pickleball-themed plate to become a mainstream sight on North Carolina roads, turning a popular pastime into a steady funding stream for research.
North Carolina is not the first state where pickleball advocates have driven this kind of campaign to the statehouse. As Hoodline previously reported, Washington state authorized its own specialty pickleball plate in 2026 after the Seattle Metro Pickleball Association gathered more than 3,800 resident signatures, building on the state's 2022 designation of pickleball as its official sport. Whether Peet and Weiss can reach 500 paid sign-ups by December, and which lawmakers might sponsor the authorization bill once the General Assembly reconvenes, remains to be seen.
