By Mike Blackwell

She is moving in the photos, always moving. Motioning with her hands, turning her head back and forth and back again. Pointing. Rising. Squirming.

Her soulful smile parts a dark, smooth face. Her two eyes, candy kisses in color, reach out from a five-year-old face, a face of joy framed perfectly by shining strands of dark brown hair. Like all little girls in a perfect world, Sierra Lewis loves her daddy, and not because he's one of the top ropers competing on the Wrangler ProRodeo Tour.

Her father, calf roper Brent Lewis, has qualified for the lucrative U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. Cup Finale in Las Vegas June 13-15, but Sierra is happily oblivious to that fact.

Someday the little girl in the anything-but-still pictures taken during a recent photo shoot will know much more about her father and mother, Cami Lewis. Someday she'll know about spinal muscular atrophy, the disease that makes her different from her friends. Someday she may know how it feels to walk without braces, and maybe she'll even run, turning a gentle breeze into a cool gust against her smiling face.

For now, Sierra Lewis is content to attack her physical therapy and travel across the country with her parents, spinning circles in her wheelchair, giving and taking the good-natured ribbing that is as much a part of rodeo as chutes and "shoots."

Certainly her father has given her plenty to be thankful for in 2002. The Wrangler ProRodeo Tour has given the Lewis' much-needed schedule flexibility, and the 32-year-old has taken full advantage of the Tour stops. Lewis has accumulated 42 points on the Tour, and anxiously awaits his trip to Las Vegas and a chance to add to his current yearly winnings of $31,137.

After finishing sixth in the Jack Daniel's World Standings in 2001, Lewis will enter the calf roping competition at the Finale in second place in the USST Series Standings.

"The Finale and the Tour makes it really good for guys like me, and really, it's made it good for everybody," said Lewis, who has earned more than $1.1 million in his career. "For guys like me who want to stay home and do other things, this has been just what we need."

Lewis certainly has ample reason to want to stay home. Just after her first birthday, Sierra stopped crawling, and her pediatrician sent her to a neurologist, who quickly diagnosed the problem. Brent and Cami then took a DNA test to confirm the diagnosis of the disease, which is passed via a gene that both parents carry. For two weeks the couple waited on the results of the test, hoping and praying and trying to pass the time as quickly as possible.

"That was the longest two weeks of our lives," Cami said. "We both have a gene, and it's not as uncommon as you might think. One in 40 people have this gene, and then if you both have it and pass it on . . ."

Doctors shocked the Lewis' with the news that Sierra would quite likely not live past her second birthday. Brent turned off the rodeo road and toward his family. After the initial shock and heartbreak, the parents, both naturally strong-willed and competitive, began the long battle.

Sierra, meanwhile, continued to play and laugh and jabber and live.

"It's devastating," Brent said. "I stayed home that year and then starting riding horses and working again. I didn't know what to do. I needed to be home, but I also realized that rodeo has been good to me and I make a lot of money rodeoing. I realized that I can be gone and be home, too, if I just don't go so hard.

"We've saved a lot of money through rodeo in the past few years. I've probably saved more money the way I go right now than when I was going full time."

Though Sierra has always been positive about her condition, there are nevertheless the unavoidable moments when she asks the question that cannot be answered. One moment came in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, when the family was on the road at another rodeo. Cami was busily going about her day in the trailer while Brent worked.

"I remember that day exactly," Cami said. "She said, 'Mom, what's it like to walk?' How do you answer that? I just said, 'Well, you walk with your braces,' and she said, 'I know, but what's it like to walk like everybody else?' You just try to make it as positive as you can.

"Some days she'll say, 'You know mom, I just want to run like the other kids.' I just say, 'I know you do,' and I try and remind her about all the things she can do. But it's hard to answer those questions."

Yet instead of worrying about answers, the Lewis' have thrived by creating their own questions when it comes to living full lives of love, disappointment and great success. Instead of "why?", they ask, "what's important?"

Missed calves are still bothersome, but not nearly as gut-wrenching as before. A sore muscle here, a flat tire there, a spike in gasoline prices . . . the little things that people fret about every day are now easily brushed aside by the Lewis clan. Much of the contentment that is found with the Lewis' comes from the knowledge that they are surrounded by dozens, perhaps hundreds, of rodeo friends and family who have gone to bat early and often for the little energetic girl who loves to get her picture taken.

"These cowboys . . . you can't believe what they've done for us," Brent said. "The year I didn't go to the (Wrangler) National Finals Rodeo, Joe Beaver got together and told everybody about what was going on, and they raised something like $20,000 for her fund.

"Then two years ago, we had to buy a wheelchair and it cost $20,000. The cowboys heard about that, and pretty quick we had $12 or $13,000 donated, just like that. They are unbelievable. You can't believe what guys will do who don't have nothing themselves."

Like all parents, Brent and Cami optimistically anticipate their lives with their daughter. Swim therapy has begun, and scientists are stalking a cure. The Wrangler ProRodeo Tour has given them more time together, and Brent is roping better than ever. Life, the Lewis' will gladly tell you, is good.

"My opinion is that this happened for a reason," Cami said. "This makes us realize that just being able to walk from here to that truck is a gift."

And the little girl in the photos, always moving, is the greatest gift of all.

"She's a character, that's for sure," Brent said. "She's everything. She's changed me.

"You've never seen her when she's not the happiest little kid that you've ever been around. Probably I'm the one that is just . . . geez, it just kills you to think about it sometimes. I wish things for her, but nothing seems to bother her. This rodeoing, I like it and I make a good living, but . . . winning everything, I used to think it meant so much, but it doesn't mean nothing, really. It's a great thing, and I still love it, but hey, it doesn't mean nothing. Doesn't mean nothing."