New Wheels Pair Finds Wheelchairs To Send Around Globe
In Ghana, the disabled are carted around in wheelbarrows.
Those who can’t walk in Russia often stay in bed.
In some Third World countries, the physically handicapped are forced to crawl.
That’s why Care Tuk helps send wheelchairs around the world.
“I want them to know there’s hope,” said Tuk, 43, an occupational therapist from Elk.
With help from her husband, Bill, Tuk has spent the past four years collecting used or broken wheelchairs in Eastern Washington, Idaho and Western Montana. The couple works with Wheels for the World, a nonprofit, evangelical program that has delivered more than 4,000 chairs worldwide since 1993.
The Tuks have collected at least 400.
On Wednesday, the couple picked up 25 broken wheelchairs stored in a basement at Lloyd’s Service Center in north Spokane. Donated by the Multiple Sclerosis Society, the chairs were stowed in a closet with walkers and canes. The metal heap was at least 6 feet tall.
“Anything we don’t use, they can have,” said Marilyn Cunningham of the Multiple Sclerosis Society. Sending wheelchairs abroad “is a great idea.”
The chairs can’t be donated in the United States because of liability problems. Because of insurance requirements, it costs about $50 a year to give a chair away, Tuk said.
Getting wheelchairs to countries like Poland and Albania is an arduous process.
After collecting chairs from nursing homes, hospitals and rehabilitation centers, the Tuks store them in a building on their property.
The wheelchairs stay there until the Tuks find people who are driving to Colorado Springs, Colo., where the chairs can be refurbished by inmates at Buena Vista State Penitentiary.
Today, the Tuks have about 150 chairs waiting to be moved.
They offer money for gas and lodging to truckers or people with U-Hauls who volunteer to transport the wheelchairs. In the past, the couple has done the work themselves. Once, they loaded 200 wheelchairs on a trailer and spent two days driving to the Colorado prison.
After the chairs are fixed, Northwest, KLM and SeaLand ship them for free to Africa, Asia, South America and Eastern Europe. The chairs are matched to individuals who often write thank-you letters to the donors.
“No more wheelbarrow and depending on my son,” wrote a 67-year-old woman from Ghana.
“This child has been carried around since the day she’s been born,” the parent of a 5-year-old Russian girl said in her note. “She can now do this by herself.”
Without the chairs, many in Russia probably would never leave their rooms, said Tuk, who spent three weeks in Moscow and St. Petersburg distributing wheelchairs in 1996. In that country, there’s usually a 10-year wait for a wheelchair.
On Wednesday, she and her husband were rummaging through their basement for wheelchairs and loading them into a truck with the help of inmates from Airway Heights Corrections Center.
“I’m a grunt,” said Bill Tuk, who is employed as a construction worker when he’s not collecting wheelchairs.
Care Tuk got involved with Wheels for the World because she wants to help people who are hurting.
She knows a lot about pain. Care Tuk is a cancer survivor. Both her parents also died of cancer.
Twelve years ago, she was in a car wreck caused by a drunken driver that left her with a serious head injury.
In college, she saw a film about Joni Eareckson Tada, a quadriplegic who started Wheels for the World. The movie inspired Tuk to become an occupational therapist.
“I want to give them encouragement, to help them realize that someone else on the other side of the world knows what they’re going through,” she said.
“It’s exciting because disabled people, for once, feel like they have a chance at life.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo