Petersburg Pilot -

Michael George Patterson's tribe calls him Ghost Walker because he was given five years to live when diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). His chances of a lung transplant are shrinking. Time with his family is slipping away.

When visitors came to his school and discouraged smoking years ago, he didn't think it was any of their business, that he'd smoke if he wanted and die when old.

"I was just like you," he told middle and high school students in Petersburg on Thursday, March 12, during an anti-smoking assembly. Patterson has become a spokesperson for the Centers fo...