
When Kathleen Mangi asked her husband how he thought her sister was doing, James Mangi grew concerned. Kathleen Mangi’s sister had died two years before. “When she asked me the same question over and over again a few minutes apart, I knew something was wrong,” recalls James Mangi, who lives in Saline, Mich. “I didn't know exactly what it was at the time, but I knew it was clearly a serious problem.”
Kathleen Mangi, a senior physical scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy, was diagnosed at 57 with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. That was 17 years ago. Her husband, also a scientist and business owner, didn’t know what to do. “When it happens to your family, it’s a bolt out of the blue,” Mangi says.