The Puzzling Piece raising awareness about autism

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Melissa and Brett Winter say their son max was diagnosed with autism when he was three years old.

Brett said, "Even four years ago when we really started to see the signs of autism weren't the numbers that you see today. And now it's 1 in 100 kids are diagnosed with autism, boys it's 1 in 70, the numbers are scary."

The couple started The Puzzling Piece to raise awareness of autism.

Melissa said, "For Max, for us, to be able to... We wanted to make sure, we are in a unique situation that we were able to somehow help kids and we made the time in our lives to do it."

The Winters travel around the country, selling The Puzzling Piece jewelry pieces at walks, such as at the Autism Speaks Walk.

"We try to donate as much as we can, all the proceeds to different charities. How much have you donated so far, any idea in the past two years? I want to say somewhere around 30 thousand dollars."

In addition to donating money to charities, the winters say they want to directly impact families.

Brett told us, "Any family that goes out and sells 60 of our pieces, we will donate an IPad to their child and along with the donation the IPad to the child, we donate the rest of the funds directly to other chairites."

Melissa said she gets emotional when she speaks to other parents.

"The letters that we are getting the emails, the phone calls. There is so much support that all of these families have that they didn't necessarily realize they have, which I am sitting at my desk crying every day."

The Winters said the IPads help the non-verbal children express themselves to others.

A couple making a difference because of their own experience.

The Puzzling Piece