Darlene and Donald Shiley

"One day, we were driving in the car with Mom," Darlene Shiley remembers. "A song came on the radio and I started singing. I suddenly realized that Mom was harmonizing with me - that she was ‘back’ and we were in sync again. We sang the whole song together, then it was over. I had two minutes. Those are the kinds of things I think about when we fund something. If the work of Leon and his people can do that for someone, give them two minutes back with someone they love who has Alzheimer's, that is important."

Leon Thal is the chairman of the UCSD Department of Neurosciences and director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC). When Darlene and Donald Shiley pledged $4 million to support the ADRC, Darlene was again in sync with her mother, Dee Marcos, for whom the center was renamed.

With their gift to UCSD to support Alzheimer’s research, the Shileys are once again inspiring dreams. "We believe that you cannot go wrong if you reward excellence, encourage vision and sometimes take a chance on your gut instinct."

Through this gift, the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center is exploring groundbreaking work through an endowment that established the Shiley Chair in Alzheimer's Disease Research, and additional current-use funding for faculty support, research projects and clinical trials.