Man travels from Brazil to D.C. to seek recognition for invention

Paulo Roberto Vieira stumbled into the Brazilian consulate on L Street NW, bedraggled, nearly broke and at the end of his rope.

Dressed in a battered black leather jacket and scuffed black jeans, he told consular officials an almost unbelievable story: He had ridden his motorcycle from his home town in southern Brazil to Washington, an 18,000-mile quest for official recognition of his life's proudest work, an automobile accessory he said he invented.

Vieira's arrival last month ended an odyssey that wound through 11 countries, and it illustrates Washington's enduring power as a magnet for ordinary people who think the answer to their prayers can be found in what's seen as the capital of the free world.

Standing next to his Honda CG150 Titan on L Street several days later, Vieira, gaunt and looking weary, recounted in his native Portuguese the improbable tale of his four-month journey.

He described how he rode for more than 1,900 miles on mostly unpaved roads through the Amazon, narrowly avoiding becoming lunch for a jaguar, one of the rain forest's most feared carnivores. How a delay in obtaining a U.S. visa forced him to traverse Mexico three times before crossing into Texas. How he hoped for sweet justice in the U.S. capital, perhaps even from the president himself.

"I decided to come here because Washington is where things get done," he said. "Barack Obama is already solving so many other problems -- how much more trouble would it be for him to solve mine?"

Vieira, 58, has followed a well-worn pattern of travel to Washington. Over the years, people have traveled to the city to seek redress for grievances great and small, including the Bonus Army encampment of the early 1930s and itinerants who make Lafayette Square their home while they fight their causes.

Washington was not the endpoint Vieira had in mind in June when he left his home town of Campinas, an industrial city of a million people about 60 miles northwest of São Paulo. He said the trip sprang from his decades working as a motorcycle mechanic.

Vieira, a lifelong tinkerer, developed a device in the mid-1990s that detects low tire pressure in vehicles and alerts drivers with an alarm. He registered a patent for it in Brazil in 1999. Since then, he has waged a battle for international validation of his rights as the inventor, particularly in the United States, where a similar accessory is made under a U.S. patent. His goal is to open a factory in Brazil to produce the alarm.

"This is my family's patrimony," said the divorced father of eight adult children, tapping an inch-thick binder of official Brazilian documents that he said back his claim. "It's for my children, my grandchildren and great-grandchildren."

The patent fight led him to leave Campinas on June 25 for Brasília, where he hoped his government could solve his problem. But after several fruitless days sparring with bureaucrats, Vieira decided there was only one place to go: Washington.

From the road, Vieira called his youngest daughter to inform her of his plans. She tried to talk him out of it.