Paraplegic

JERUSALEM -- Using robotic leg braces, Israeli veteran Radi Kaiuf, a 46-year-old paraplegic, was able to complete the 10-kilometer race in Tel Aviv's marathon Friday. Starting at 6 a.m. to beat unusually hot temperatures, Kaiuf was able to participate without his wheelchair thanks to the robotic braces , an Israeli invention that allows paraplegics to walk with the use of crutches. "This was my dream, and it feels great to achieve it,"' said Kaiuf, whose spine was wounded in a 1988 firefight in Lebanon.

A disabled man who was stuck inside Disneyland's "It's a Small World" ride after it broke down - though the music played on - has sued the amusement park and been awarded $8,000, the man's attorney said Tuesday. Santa Monica-based attorney David Geffen said his paraplegic client, L.A. County resident Jose Martinez, 52, went to Disneyland with his wife for the first time since he was a child on Nov. 27, 2009. They were having a great time, Geffen said, but the "It's a Small World" ride "stopped working as he was just exiting the goodbye tunnel.

A police officer who shot a former Costa Mesa businessman, leaving him a paraplegic, was ordered to pay an additional $535,000 to the shooting victim, an appellate court ruled Tuesday. The City of Hawthorne, which employed Officer Michael Moran, already has paid Jon McClure, 43, the $1.66 million McClure was awarded by an Orange County Superior Court judge. But on Tuesday the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana reinstated the original jury verdict of $2.2 million.

JERUSALEM -- Using robotic leg braces, Israeli veteran Radi Kaiuf, a 46-year-old paraplegic, was able to complete the 10-kilometer race in Tel Aviv's marathon Friday. Starting at 6 a.m. to beat unusually hot temperatures, Kaiuf was able to participate without his wheelchair thanks to the robotic braces , an Israeli invention that allows paraplegics to walk with the use of crutches. "This was my dream, and it feels great to achieve it,"' said Kaiuf, whose spine was wounded in a 1988 firefight in Lebanon.

The matriarch of a Salvadoran family who tried to carry her paraplegic son to safety was killed, and a relative died later of burns, after a Christmas tree exploded, sending 18 others fleeing the house. Pilar Sanchez Flores, 54, rushed to rescue her 18-year-old paraplegic son Monday evening, but as she carried him in her arms, she stumbled in a smoky hallway near the door and died. A relative, 41-year-old Mario Nunez, died Tuesday from smoke inhalation and burns to 95% of his body.

Using jeeps, planes and helicopters, searchers scoured two eastern Sierra canyons north of Mojave for two Southern California men, one a paraplegic, missing since Sunday. Kern County sheriff's deputies began the search for Donald Freeland, 19, of Torrance and Terrance Seever, 31, of Lomita after their families reported that they failed to return from a weekend outing to try out a new four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Re "Paraplegic allegedly 'dumped' on skid row," Feb. 9 The alleged dumping of the paraplegic on skid row begs for someone to file a huge civil lawsuit. With a large award in such a case, perhaps hospitals would decide it is not in their best interests to continue this egregious practice. Apparently, threats of legal action are not a sufficient deterrent. BILL BUSCH Redondo Beach The story of the gentleman who was dumped on skid row perfectly illustrates the ethical low that we have become accustomed to tolerating.

Re "Businesses Inaccessible to Handicapped Kept on Run by Paraplegic," May 11: Bravo to Kornel Botosan for his efforts to force businesses to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The reality for disabled people is that a large number of businesses, both large and small, as well as public agencies, do not take the ADA seriously and have the attitude of "so sue me" when contacted about their inaccessibility and noncompliance. As a paraplegic who has worked as a pharmacist in Southern California for the last 20 years, I can attest to the number of situations in which even minimal compliance with the ADA can only be obtained through litigation.

Some things we don't ask. Like of the paraplegic in his wheelchair: How's your sex life? John Hockenberry's is. . . . No, no. Let him tell you. A broadcast journalist formerly with NPR and now with ABC, Hockenberry wrote this travelogue, autobiography, confessional, cathartic and reproof after spending exactly half of his 38 years as a T-5 paraplegic, numb from mid-chest down, a "crip," sitting in a wheelchair. But hardly sitting still. Hockenberry is a peripatetic paraplegic.

Re "Coach Hangs Tough at Plate," May 4: The story of Victor Barrios, a paraplegic wheelchair-bound baseball coach winning his discrimination claim against the California Interscholastic Federation, is heartwarming though not unique. In 1955, Eulis Hubbs, a victim of adult polio, coached the Colton Little League All Star team from his wheelchair to a berth in the finals of the Little League World Series. For several years before and many years thereafter, Hubbs was well-known in the baseball coaching ranks of the Inland Empire.

YOKNEAM ILLIT, Israel - The bullet that tore through Israeli paratrooper Radi Kaiuf's spine during a 1988 Lebanon firefight shattered his dreams of becoming a dentist. Doctors said he'd never again walk or have a normal life. But Kaiuf, now 46, had other ideas. He decided he would not allow the injury to defeat or define him. Over the years he married and had four children. He learned to drive with a specially equipped car, exercised with a hand-powered bicycle and even went skiing in a wheelchair.

In 1984, when he was 51, novelist Reynolds Price learned that a pencil-shaped tumor, about 10 inches long and malignant, had invaded his spine. Several surgeries and dozens of radiation treatments followed, leaving him a paraplegic racked with pain and the uncertainty of his survival. His happy life of teaching Milton at Duke University and writing several hours a day was over, or so it seemed in his many dark moments. Then, after a year of this agony, something miraculous happened: He knocked out a commissioned play in two months and finished the last two-thirds of his seventh novel, "Kate Vaiden," which won the National Book Critics Circle Award as the best work of fiction in 1986.

The city of Los Angeles paid $7 million to settle a lawsuit brought by a volunteer for the Los Angeles Triathlon, who was left a paraplegic by an accident during the event in 2007, his attorney said Monday. Steve Albala, who was 60 at the time of the accident, was on his motorcycle helping to officiate the bicycle portion of the triathlon. A traffic officer motioned for a vehicle to enter an intersection into the volunteer's path, causing the accident, Albala's attorney contended in the lawsuit.

Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center on Friday settled allegations that it left a paraplegic man crawling around downtown Los Angeles' skid row in a hospital gown and with a colostomy bag by agreeing to pay $1 million and be monitored by a former U.S. attorney for up to five years. The resolution of the lawsuit marks the biggest settlement so far in the Los Angeles city attorney's efforts to crack down on hospitals and other institutions that "dump" patients on skid row.

A paraplegic woman from Long Beach completed a rowing journey 2,900 miles across the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday morning, landing at English Harbour, Antigua, according to race organizers. Angela Madsen, 47, and Frenchman Franck Festor, 36, a partial amputee, rowed their 24-foot-long vessel from the Canary Islands as part of a transatlantic rowing race. Their vessel, the Row of Life, finished 12th out of 20 boats, the rest of which were rowed by able-bodied individuals. The race began Dec. 2. -- Susannah Rosenblatt

Civil rights attorneys on Thursday sued Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in connection with the alleged dumping of a paraplegic man on skid row last year. The incident sparked nationwide outrage after The Times reported that the man crawled in the gutter in a soiled hospital gown while dragging a catheter bag. Witnesses told The Times that the van driver, Finece Mathis, ignored their pleas to stop.

"I still go to bed with my heart pounding and wake up with my heart racing," said Jennifer Smith, 32, who became a paraplegic after being shot during the last of four attempts on her life in 1980. "I keep friends around me at all times. Living in fear is immensely more crippling than any kind of physical disability." Smith is not her real name. She lives in Orange County and conceals her identity because she fears that some who plotted to kill her have not been caught.

People laughed when blind athlete Erik Weihenmayer told them he wanted to climb mountains. "They thought it was pretty funny," he said during a benefit luncheon for Goodwill Industries of Orange County. But the 31-year-old who lost his eyesight at 13 to a congenital disease has scaled some of the world's highest summits, including Mt. McKinley in Alaska. He is also an acrobatic skydiver, scuba diver, long-distance biker and marathon skier.

Robert Scott doesn't want sympathy -- only about 3 feet of space in a parking lot. Scott, who has been paraplegic since birth, drives a car equipped with special hand controls for the brakes and accelerator. To get in, he wheels up to the door, lifts himself into the driver's seat and then disassembles his wheelchair one piece at a time. He throws the pieces into the back seat. "I have always been completely independent," Scott said. "This includes driving on my own since I was 18."

Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, accused of dumping a homeless paraplegic patient on a skid row street, announced Friday that it would adopt the same discharge rules for the homeless as Kaiser Permanente agreed to this week to resolve criminal charges and lawsuits by the Los Angeles city attorney. Kaiser's settlement with the city attorney requires that it establish new discharge protocols for homeless patients and provide more training for employees, and calls for monitoring by retired U.