If you don't watch out, Max Watts will steal your heart.

He's spindly for 21 and bald as an egg, with ears that look like they could carry him aloft in a stiff wind. His lightning grin is almost too big for his face, and when he laughs -- which is often -- he warms the room.

		Dan DeLong / P-I
	Max Watts enjoys a story read by Northwest's Child assistant teacher Katie Larson at the non-profit organization's Seattle location.

"He laughs so hard his head turns red," said Darcy Doyle-Hupf, who has known Max since he was 12. "He has no hair, so he's like a light bulb in the dark."

Max is a student at Nathan Hale High School, but for nine years his home away from home has been Northwest's Child, which provides extended day programs for adults and school-age children with moderate to severe disabilities.

There is no other place like it in the state.

For the 44 families on its roster, this private program is a safety net that allows parents to remain employed -- confident that their high-needs child is safe, happy and developing friendships and skills.

Without it, said Doyle-Hupf, many parents would face a grim choice: Either quit work and go on welfare, or hand their disabled child over to the state for placement with foster parents, who, ironically, receive state aid for which many biological parents don't qualify.

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Max's mother, Melissah Watts, was fortunate to find Northwest's Child, one of the P-I Readers Care Fund recipients, after the breakup of her longtime marriage sent her back into the work force.

Her two older children were teens and could fend for themselves after school, but Max needed skilled supervision. Northwest's Child -- with locations in Seattle, Lynnwood and Kenmore -- offered a homelike setting with a warm, highly trained teaching staff.

"I've worked hard to maintain a modest, middle-class income, which I couldn't do if I didn't have a place for Max," said Watts, 49, a research technician at Puget Sound Health Care System, the Veterans Affairs hospital in Seattle.

Max was born 2 1/2 months premature, with brain-wiring difficulties and a condition called ectodermal dysplasia.

Although he walked and talked on time, the disorder -- which can take many forms -- left him bereft of hair follicles and hindered his sweat-gland function, making him vulnerable to seizures.

When Max was 9 he had a seizure in the bathtub and nearly drowned. Oxygen deprivation was a cruel thief, robbing him of all independent function.

"He couldn't walk or talk, or even lift his head up," his mother said. "He was just out."

Refusing to write him off, she fed Max like a baby bird, carted him to physical therapy and searched for ways to stimulate his brain. Sometimes she strapped a paintbrush to his outstretched hand and rolled his wheelchair back and forth in front of an easel, trying to connect him with the physical world.

		Karen Ducey / P-I
	Melissah Watts picks up her son Max from the Northwest's Child school-age site in Seattle this month. Max, who is disabled, has been helped by the organization for nine years.

Max remained silent for three years. Then something switched on, and he started making sounds. The sounds became words, then phrases. One day he started singing along with a music box playing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."

Meanwhile, his sister, Alexis, and brother, Sam, filled Max's ear with chatter. Whenever Sam cracked a good joke, Max would "laugh like crazy," said his mom. "You could tell the lights were on inside."

Teacher Brian Osborn, assistant director at Northwest's Child, has heard these stories many times. He calls Max's progress "nothing short of a miracle." The staff's challenge is to keep the progress going.

"When Max first came to us," said Doyle-Hupf, "virtually all the teeth in his mouth were broken because he kept falling. He blows over in a whisper. When he fell, he would never catch himself; he went face first. We wound up creating a goal around teaching Max to fall safely."

Max's balance improved as he gained body awareness. He still needs a steadying grip when he walks his bent-knee, swaying shuffle. But he moves under his own steam and rarely falls.

Despite his awesome achievements, Max still faces heavy challenges. For one thing, his short-term memory is like a sieve.

"If you ask him what he had for lunch, he won't remember," Melissah Watts said.

So there was more than fun afoot when teachers roped him into a game of Harry Potter Uno recently with some of his after-school buddies. For Max, the card-matching game was an exercise in visual recognition and memory.

He pored over his cards earnestly, bending so low his nose nearly touched the table.

"I'm win-ning!" he sing-songed with a sly laugh.

"You're so smart, it hurts!" cheered his mom, who had arrived from work in time to catch the last moments of the game.

Melissah Watts has learned to go with the flow. She's unflinching about her son's difficulties -- "He's not going to be entering MIT anytime soon," she says dryly -- and she laughs at whatever scrap of absurdity life throws her way. After all, what's the alternative?

One of her favorite stories concerns Max's conspicuously hairless head. When her children were young, passers-by were often moved to pity, thinking Max had cancer.

"My other children were constantly receiving money," she said with a laugh. "People wanted to give them a dollar so they'd have something 'in this hard time.' "

Max, no pushover, has become a firebrand political groupie who listens to NPR on the drive home and takes his voting rights seriously.

"I'm telling you, there is no fiercer Democrat than Maxwell Watts," his mom said.

Don't even get him started on George Bush.

"He really ssssucks!" Max said, working to pull out the words. "He's not good."

He's equally passionate about the Power Rangers, the do-good, animated TV heroes.

"They're awesome!" he said, eyes squinting with laughter. Kimberly, the Pink Power Ranger, is his favorite.

Such is the dichotomy of Max.

It's a weird thing with him," Melissah Watts said. "It's like having a loose light bulb. Sometimes he's perfect and sometimes not so good."

Like all of us, Max has his down days. When tempers flare, Osborn, a teacher of extraordinary calm and patience, appeals to Max's better nature by invoking his Star Wars heroes.

"What would Yoda say?" Osborn prompts. "What would Yoda want you to do? How does a Jedi act?"

Max tends to weigh these questions seriously. In time the mood lifts and life goes on, as it does for all the students here.

"They have every excuse to be angry, frustrated, sad and disappointed about all the things they'll never accomplish," Doyle-Hupf said. "Instead, they're so happy that you're there."

Osborn, clearly humbled by his extraordinary students, said simply, "They teach you how to be a better person."

Other non-profit groups that benefit from the P-I Readers Care Fund are the Family and Adult Service Center, Forgotten Children's Fund, The Little Bit Therapeutic Riding Center, New Futures, Powerful Voices and Rise n' Shine.

Learn more about Northwest's Child at northwestchild.org.

For more than a quarter-century, Seattle P-I readers have donated generously to the newspaper's annual Readers Care Fund, generating more than $5.4 million for local charities. Today we feature another of the seven charities that will benefit from this year's drive. Read more about the charity drive at readerscarefund.org.