Bound to His Chair, He Lets Spirits Soar

WESTWOOD —  Axel Lopez doesn’t mull the questions, mainly because he doesn’t have time for the pain.

What if his mother hadn’t left him when he was 1?

What if his father hadn’t been married to the bottle?

What if the polio vaccine he needed so urgently at the age of 2 had been a priority and not a casualty of parental neglect?

“I wouldn’t be here,” Lopez says with a smile more exuberant than wistful. Location is often relative, and where an outsider might see a bright, lively and talented 18-year-old trapped in a wheelchair, Lopez sees opportunity otherwise out of reach and out of the question.

Lopez has played tennis in Seoul, Korea. He has played tennis all over the United States. He plays it well enough to land in Olympic Festivals, on posters and on national television specials.

He knows the reason is because he plays tennis in a wheelchair.

“Tennis got me to a lot of places I hadn’t been,” he says. “Without wheelchair tennis, I would have never seen them.”

To Lopez, his wheelchair is a vehicle. It is a noble view, considering how he found his way into one. With two healthy legs, Lopez probably winds up just another senior with a good backhand at Santa Ana Valley High. But two healthy legs could have been had so easily, at so slim a cost.

Lopez was born in El Salvador in 1973. In 1974, his mother immigrated to the United States without him, “to make money,” he says. His father remained in El Salvador, but in body only. He was an alcoholic, a disease that would kill him in 1986, and as Axel puts it, “he was there but he couldn’t take care of me.”

At 2, the polio struck. “It was all over my body,” he says. “In my arms, my neck, from the neck down.” Nothing was done until it was too late. “At the time, my parents weren’t responsible,” Lopez says. Then, with a simplicity that chills: “Mom and Dad forgot my shot.”

Forgot his shot. The consequences would be felt a lifetime, leaving Lopez with legs so weak that he can only hobble along for very short distances. Everything else, he does by wheelchair.

Hindsight for Lopez could be blinded by bitterness, but he claims, “It doesn’t make me angry. I don’t think of it. I look to the future, I just continue. I never look back.”

Still, Lopez and his mother have been reunited inside county lines--Lopez lives with his uncle in Santa Ana, his mother in Stanton--and yet they rarely talk. “The last time, I think, was Mother’s Day,” he says. “It’s hard. My grandparents raised me. To me, they are my parents. My real mom, I don’t feel any affection. I wasn’t raised by her. I wasn’t raised with her love.”

War bought Lopez passage to the United States when, in 1981, his grandparents decided to flee El Salvador. Lopez was 8 at the time and his childhood memories include the sounds of “bombs and shots in the air . . . It was hard to go to school, it was hard for my grandparents to take care of me during wartime. They left so I would have a better future.”

Santa Ana was the eventual destination, but a week in Mission Viejo changed Lopez’s life. He was 11 when he attended a wheelchair sports camp and was introduced to wheelchair tennis. The sport was then in its infancy, invented in 1976 by Brad Parks of San Clemente, and with Parks’ encouragement, Lopez developed relatively quickly--two years to master the basics and, then, steady ascendance in the national rankings.

Today, Lopez is ranked among the top six junior wheelchair players in the country, which is why he was on the Sunset Canyon courts at UCLA Tuesday. He won a silver medal in the 1988 Paralympic Games in Seoul, earned a bronze in the recent national junior championships in Princeton, N.J., and was angling for another bronze in this year’s Olympic Festival until he lost to Jason Van Beek of Chino, 6-4, 5-7, 1-6, Tuesday.

Lopez was in control of the match--he was a game away from victory, leading, 5-4, in the second set--when he lunged for a short ball and fell out of his chair, landing face down and bruising a knee.

Shaken, he lost seven of the match’s last eight games. “So much of this game is all in here,” Lopez said, pointing to his head.

So much to compete with, too. Lopez also sings in the Santa Ana Valley choir, writes poetry and is taking acting classes with the South Coast Repertory, “I was Oberon The King in ‘A Midsummer’s Night Dream,’ ” he says proudly. “My goal is to be in films. Big films.” He says his idols, his celluloid heroes, are Sean Connery and Robert Downey Jr., so maybe he has much to strive for, or maybe not so much.

Coming soon is a made-for-TV film, scheduled for NBC in October, called “The Wide World of Kids.” Lopez will be profiled on the program. His picture is also destined to turn up on a similar series of sports posters. As Lopez says, his wheelchair is taking him places.

As for tennis, Lopez says he plays every day, usually hitting against members of the Santa Ana Valley varsity. “My goal is to someday play the big guys in the open division. I know that’s a pretty tough division, but I can get up there.”

Lopez ought to know. Tough is one thing he’s aced.