EAST WILLIAMSBURG — A man whose $7,000 motorized wheelchair was stripped for parts after emergency workers had to leave it behind when taking him to the hospital will get a replacement chair thanks to an advocacy group for the disabled.
Richard Vega, 52, cracked his pelvis after being thrown from his chair while feeling woozy and nauseous near the intersection of Debevoise and Humboldt streets on July 9. He was rushed to Woodhull Hospital, but emergency workers on scene said they couldn't fit the chair in the ambulance.
As Vega sat in his hospital bed recovering from the injury, he soon learned through caretakers and his brother that the chair he relied on had been stripped for parts.
The story of the theft made it's way to Yannick Benjamin, 38, founder of Wheeling Forward, an organization that runs an adaptive-fitness center and advocates for unemployed people with disabilities.
He immediately reached out to Vega, and the two have met multiple times trying to fit him with an appropriate motorized wheelchair while he waits for insurance payments to cover a new one.
"This is giving me hope," said Vega last week when Benjamin stopped into his Humboldt Street apartment to test out a 24-inch motorized chair. "Thank you for giving me hope."
Finding a suitable chair ofr Vega — who weighs about 400 pounds — has been hard work, Benjamin explained. They've scoured three different facilities to find the right one and still need to make some alterations so Vega can use it around his house.
"I knew for sure it was going to be a challenge," Benjamin said. "That's not going to be easy."
The group previously got a 22-inch chair that was too small for Vega, so last week they got the 24-inch model, which will receive several alterations and then be delivered to him later this week.
Benjamin, who grew up in Hell's Kitchen, was paralyzed from the waist down in a car crash on the West Side Highway in 2003. He founded Wheeling Forward with his friend Alex Elegudin, whom he met in the hospital where they were both recovering.
While the two had extensive social and family networks that helped them get back to their lives, they both realized a lot of others were making the transition alone.
"What the hell? Where's the mentorship, where's the love?" Benjamin said he wondered.
Now that Vega is set to get his new chair from Wheeling Forward this week, he's looking forward to getting around more easily.
"I'll finally be able to move in this apartment without feeling like I'm going to have a heart attack," he said, noting he has a manual chair that he maneuvers with great difficulty.
And once he's more mobile, Vega said he hoped to start going to Benjamin's adaptive gym and maybe even playing adaptive basketball.
"We got to get you to eat healthy, cardio, stretching," Benjamin said. "Deep down he really wants to be the best person he can be. He's got a lot of work ahead of him."
