Picture of a boy’s life

REARDAN – He’s almost motionless. Tubes circle his neck and loop over the back of his motorized wheelchair. A machine breathes for 10-year-old Zachary Baldwin (Zak for short) on another regular day of class at Reardan-Edwall Grade School.

Then Zak’s mother fits the handle of a paintbrush into his mouth.

Zak begins to paint.

Twitched along by motions of his tongue, Zak’s brush cleverly streaks on red paint within the lines. Being quadriplegic is no hindrance to a good artist.

Zak was paralyzed from a hit-and-run accident in 2005, but in the past 12 months he’s leaped over several obstacles that surprised his doctors. The fourth-grader, who is as cognitively sound as any other kid his age, was not expected to ever talk, drink or eat on his own again.

Guess again, said his parents and aides.

The classroom art wall boasts a dozen of Zak’s mouth-painted works. He went trick-or-treating this Halloween and plays kickball at recess in his motorized wheelchair. He dreams of a career as an artist.

Able to wiggle his head and mouth only slightly, Zak can still read, eat and drink, and beat his older brother, Alex, over the choice of video games at home.

“We don’t want him to be that typical child who’s been in a severe accident and confined to the house, not taken out in the world,” his mother, Liz Baldwin, said. “I don’t want that for him. I want him to be as normal as possible.”

Zak’s painting skills have dramatically increased this fall, possibly because of a year of electrical stimulation therapy for his neck muscles. He’s beginning to take the occasional breath on his own, to the excitement of his parents and his paraeducator, Andi Rettkowski. Liz Baldwin and her husband, Brian, are considering a surgery which may one day allow Zak to breathe naturally.

“I just keep hoping to make life better for him,” Liz said, noting her focus is not on the life Zak could have had, but the life Zak now has.

Zak’s old life vanished for the Baldwins in late July 2005.

The 8-year-old was dirt-biking with his friend and his friend’s dad, Doug Kuykendall, when Zak rolled through a stop sign northeast of Reardan, according to the Washington State Patrol. An oncoming car struck his body, instantly breaking both his legs and stretching his spine severely.

The driver, 33-year-old Michael Andren, got out to help locate the boy and then left the scene. Kuykendall gave Zak CPR until paramedics arrived.

Andren was charged and convicted of a hit-and-run felony, according to Lincoln County Superior Court records. He served 13 months in prison and was released in early 2007. It was his third felony.

“We can’t go back and fix it. I just want to focus on him (Zak),” Liz said.

That attitude, she said, is what has kept them moving through a two-year “lifestyle” of more than nine surgeries, numerous cross-country doctor visits and millions of dollars in hospital bills. They remodeled parts of their home to accommodate Zak’s wheelchair and hired a nurse to watch him every night. Liz spends 20 hours a day near Zak.

She doesn’t harp on the emotional toll the accident took on her and her husband.

“We had to keep going. We had to do what was best for him,” she said. In fact, the more questions you ask about her personal struggle with her son’s handicap, the more she elaborates on the attitude that got them through.

“You’ve got to live each day to your fullest. … Our whole life changed that day. We’ve got to make sure we live each day so we don’t have any regrets,” she said.

Rettkowski was one of the emergency medical technicians who responded to the 2005 accident. She’s also the mother of Zak’s best friend, Dustyn. Rettkowski watched Zak go from a healthy 8-year-old to a boy struggling to hold onto life to a recovering quadriplegic slowly painting his way to victory.

“I go home with a smile on my face knowing my life isn’t as bad as it seems,” Rettkowski said.

And what is Zak’s life motto?

“Do the best you can,” he said softly, with his wall of paintings behind him.

And so his world goes on, breath by breath, paint stroke by paint stroke, dream after dream.