Football hero leaps to aiding cancer survivors

Jennifer London Correspondent

GREEN BAY, Wis. - Kym Lindau is a breast cancer survivor who finds comfort in simple pleasures. Leroy Butler is a Super Bowl champion best known for the Lambeau Leap.

So what would bring these two together?

"I love waking up every morning and saying I can make a difference," Butler says. He's making that difference off the field with the Leroy Butler Foundation for Breast Cancer.

During his 12 seasons with the Green Bay Packers, Leroy Butler delighted and inspired hundreds of thousands of fans — for home games, nearly 73,000 would fill the seats at Lambeau Field. But it was one female fan, wearing not the Packers green and gold, but pink, who ultimately inspired Butler.

"I saw this young lady with a pink ribbon on her jersey and I said 'what's that ribbon about?' and she said, 'Well, it's about breast cancer,'" Butler says.

It was something Butler knew little about, but it soon became his call to action.

"We've helped 400 women," Butler says. "They're making decisions [like]: Do I make my car payment or do I pay for my medicine."

It's a hard choice for survivors who, like Kym, were on the verge of losing everything.

"My house went into foreclosure, lost my insurance, almost lost my vehicle," Lindau says. "I was very hopeless and didn't care if I lived or if I died."

As a last hope, she penned a letter. Butler was so moved he picked up the phone.

"I told her she was approved for funds," he says.

Funds that let her keep her car, her house, her beloved horses.

"I said, 'How can somebody like you care about somebody like me, because, um, I'm nobody,'" Lindau says. "And he's Mr. Lambeau Leap."

Making the leap from pigskins to pink ribbons, and restoring hope and touching lives.