If the place is amazing, as Crawford described it, that's because of the spirit of the employees as well as the clients. Shirley Manning, for instance, was a client as a child and returned roughly 40 years later as an employee.
Blind at birth, Manning attended Junior Blind's Malibu camp as a 9-year-old, and while other blind children took to ocean kayaking, snow- and water-skiing and white water rafting, Manning found horseback riding exhilarating.
"I can't drive a car," said Manning, whose guitar was near her desk, "but there are very few things blind people can't do."
Manning, now in her 50s, runs a residential program that teaches independence and job skills to adults, and eight of her 12 instructors are blind. She is married to a man who lost his sight at 23 when he was wounded by a gunshot. He's now a playwright and actor.
Just down the hall from Manning's office, I met Dolores Caldwell, the kind of person who makes you want to ask forgiveness for being so inadequate. Five days a week, from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., she volunteers as a teacher's aide in a class for blind and disabled students between the ages of 16 and 22. As a member of Junior Blind's foster grandparent program, she teaches Braille, money management and other skills.
Caldwell, by the way, is 74.
"I'm not a person who sits at home and watches stories on television," said Caldwell, a retired special ed teacher who knew she wasn't cut out for a retirement of bingo tournaments and cruise ship shuffleboard.
After class, she goes home to her husband and they discuss her day. He gets on the Internet and researches the issues she brings up, and together they work out strategies for helping her most challenging students.
"It keeps my mind going," Caldwell said. "If I have a child who can accomplish something in the end, at 22, I feel like I've really done something. I love this."
In an upstairs computer training room, Sgt. Maj. Acosta was where I last saw him a year ago, his dog Charley at his feet. He had the same proud bearing and wore a shirt that said, "If you love your freedom, thank a vet."
Acosta, 51, has been learning everything from life skills to spreadsheet programs as he trains to return to his career at the Southern California Gas Co., where he will be a data analyst. But his progress has been interrupted in the last year by six surgeries to rebuild his palate and facial bones damaged in the mortar attack, and he has more surgery scheduled early next year.
