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In January 2006, Paul wrote the following letter to actor David Hasselhoff. Six months later, David responded to Paul's letter, asking him if he can include the full letter -- unedited -- at the end of his memoirs as an inspiration to others. David's book, Making Waves, is now on store shelves in the U.K. and will eventually be released in the United States on May 15th, 2007. It's also the ONLY letter from a fan that David has included in his memoirs!!
Paul's letter is a very powerful and evocative nod to the Knight Rider theme that "One man can make a difference." Some readers were apparently inspired!
 
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 An experience that helped shape my own personality was a discovery that you must be your own best friend before you can discover and truly accept the meaning of having a disability. This occurred when I was fifteen years old, during a class trip to visit the beautiful St. Joseph's Cathedral in Montreal, Canada, in 1986. The leg braces and crutches covering the walls and the entire ceiling of that cathedral were left there by thousands of people who believed that their visit to the shrine cured them of their challenges. So I took my leg braces off, left them on the floor, and was able to walk down the church steps with Saint Joseph guiding me. My mom took my braces home with her, and I still needed to wear them for another year. But, on the very same date one year later, my orthopedist finally decided to allow me to walk without my leg braces, and I have not needed them since. For the first time in my life, I understood that the question, "Why me?" was an unusually selfish attitude; you should be asking "Why not me?" In other words, your challenges are not supposed to paralyze you; they are supposed to help you discover that all life is yours - to conquer, to love, to live.
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 For the past five years, I have been especially proud to be a member of a unique speakers bureau called A Vision in Motion. This bureau specializes in experienced motivators who have each overcome tremendous adversity and inspire others through their workshops, programs, and keynotes! Thus, I am part of a team of speakers with various backgrounds, and we smoothly work together and address different topics such as disability awareness, self-esteem enhancement, peer pressure and violence prevention, anti-bullying strategies, and other topics that help enhance the intellectual growth of our audiences. A fellow speaker, Cornelius Barker, for example, is actually a former gang member who turned his life around and became a school teacher, principal, and in fact, a school administrator! Cornelius is a truly amazing guy who has become one of my role models for his attitude and outlook on life. You can see the amazing collection of speakers we have at the web site www.avisioninmotion.com
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 Another speaker in our bureau, Tom Malloy, is a producer/actor who has actually inspired me to write to you! (Tom provided me with your agent's address). In October, I spoke to students at a school in southern Virginia, and Tom and I took a seven-hour roadtrip from New Jersey to get to the school. Tom was the one who was driving so that I would not be tired when it came time for me to speak to the students. During this time, we talked about television shows that have inspired both of us when we were kids, and Knight Rider was one of them. I discovered, to my amazement, that Tom took his grandmother out for dinner every New Year's Eve, which was exactly what I used to do every year when my own grandmother was alive. And even if she passed away five years ago, she is still living inside me. For when you are reading this very letter, Mr. Hasselhoff, you are not merely reading what I am writing. My grandmother is also talking to you as I type this, because she will always be a part of me. So isn't the heart a beautiful pen with which to write memories? It's an experience I pass along to students in my discussion of the importance of role models in life.
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 This experience made me realize that life itself is a fantastic dream. There are good times and bad times as you go through life. The good times are when the sun rises in the east, and when it's high in the sky, you feel good about yourself, and everything is going your way. But there comes times when the sun sets, and you go through a period of nightfall - that's anger, frustration, depression coming to the forefront. But you cannot lose sight of the future - the sun must rise again, it has to, so good times are ahead. I am thus living a fantastic dream, having new experiences each day that help me re-evaluate myself and my purpose in life. And the good thing from this accident was the fact that I took care of that pseudo-BMW for eight years - but that morning the car finally took care of me: I wasn't hurt. So, in a way, my car has also been a KITT to me.
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 Though my family and friends cannot appreciate a television show like Knight Rider in the same way that I do, I believe that it inspired me to take the overall theme to heart and harness its power in a way that few people can understand, or even identify with. I now look back and realize those four years may have been the most critical in helping me to develop an appreciation that my own physical challenges might be among the greatest gifts that I have received. My parents and family certainly helped a great deal and deserve special thanks, yes, but I needed some sort of personal revelation that could only come outside of the family. Your show, along with others like the Dukes of Hazzard and ChiPs, made me understand that each of us can also be heroes - in other words, ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances - like our favorite television characters did each week. I then began to understand that I have the power to share this positive perspective with others to effectively shatter negative stereotypes, because from what I have seen, it's a negative attitude that can very well become a disability. However, if you have learned to embrace a positive attitude and enjoy interacting with others, you have the power to dream about your future and also build upon that dream.
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