In the Field: Elliott Sadler

I've got an autism awareness ribbon decal above the driver's window of my Dodge Dealers/UAW Charger -- right next to my name -- and it's the last thing I look at whenever I get in there to practice, qualify or race.

For the Sadler family, autism awareness is a daily fact of life, and it has been since my niece, my brother Hermie's daughter, Halie Dru, was diagnosed with autism in 2001.

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Man, when I get in the car I'm thinking about the business at hand, but autism is something I think about every day. I remember what our reaction was when we first found out Halie had autism.

We pretty much had to look it up in a dictionary, because we didn't know what autism was. We were really caught off guard and had to turn to a lot of different people -- friends, family and professionals -- to try to teach us what was going on.

So awareness of the condition is something that's very important to me and my family, and the little sticker on all of my cars is my constant reminder.

But this month, we're doing something else to try to raise awareness of autism and, as we always do, try to get our fans involved.

All this month I'm wearing a helmet with a special design. April is autism awareness month, and we're always trying to figure out how to do different things to raise money for the Autism Society of America.

So we decided to come up with a different helmet design than what I usually wear. It's designed and painted by Ryan Young of Indocil Art, who does all my helmets, and it incorporates the autism ribbon logo into the paint scheme.

It's pretty neat. He did a real good job with it. It's just something different to try to raise money. Fans have already been calling-in trying to find out how to bid on it, how to be a part of it all and how to donate money.

I'm wearing the helmet at all four of the races in April, then at the end of the month we're going to put it up on sadlerfoundation.org and bid it off to raise money for the Hermie and Elliott Sadler Foundation.

April is very special to me, because it's a month that celebrates autism awareness, and April 30 is my birthday -- so it's pretty cool to be able to do this to try to raise some money and see how it all works out.

The response has been awesome. The fans are what make us look good by being a part of our fundraisers and our foundation and things like that. (Continued)