Where Am I Giving: A Global Adventure Exploring How to Use Your Gifts and Talents to Make a Difference

11Science of Do-gooding (Kenya, 2017): Effective altruism / The cost to save a life / Should you give your kidney? / Extreme givers

I THREW MY CELL PHONE, dropped my laptop bag, and ran as if my life depended on it. Part of me wanted to throw up or scream or both, but I needed to focus all of my energy on running as fast as I could.

Nothing else in my life mattered in that moment more than running.

Moments ago, the kids had followed me into the garage. Before I helped them into the car, I realized that I had forgotten my wallet.

Griffin, who was 4, is on the autism spectrum, and has a deep curiosity to explore places where he shouldn't be – all of our cabinets, no matter how high, the top of the refrigerator, the inside of a stranger's unlocked car, the tub of the dryer. You could say he's part spelunker or mountain goat. In autism lingo, he's also an “eloper” – here one second, gone the next.

I had been pretty sure he wouldn't bolt for the road and that I had enough time to grab my wallet off the counter and get back outside before anything bad could happen. I had assumed wrong.

Griffin wasn't in the garage. He wasn't playing outside the garage. He wasn't on the swing. He usually takes two strides and does this little skip, as if he's too footloose and fancy free to run full out, so he runs joyously. Not this time. He was running at a dead sprint down our long driveway to the road.

Dead. That's what he would be if I didn't get to him, I thought as I ran. But he was already ...