Sunday Story -- Painting a survivor’s picture

Young Chang

Valinda Martin interrupts herself as a pair of seniors pass by.

“There’s the best looking couple on the island!” she says.

“Have you been drinking again?” the husband jokes.

Martin laughs and the three friends chat.

Moments later, someone shouts out, “Hey, Valinda!”

She shouts back hello and flashes a pearl-toothed, deeply dimpled

smile.

Life is good, Martin says. Her fellow business owners on Balboa Island

know her name and she knows theirs.

These are the simple pleasures for someone paralyzed from the waist

down and confined to a wheelchair for life. Someone who experiences sharp

back pains every second of every day. It’s been seven and a half years

since the former 5-foot, 7-inch model last walked. And it’s been what

seems to be an eternity since she did something quickly and easily.

“The whole walking thing,” as she puts it, took some getting used to.

Yes, she has her bad days, but Martin’s convinced the horrible boating

accident that left her in this state was a test.

Today, she says she is a better person. The 39-year-old Corona del Mar

resident notices it’s a pretty day outside and is fortunate to have a

“wonderful” family and community.

Even her cat, Harley, makes life easier for her. The feline knows the

difference between a phone ring and a fax ring and jumps off the bed to

fetch an incoming fax and deliver it to her feet.

She and sister Jenni Martin of Sacramento laugh a lot -- to get

through the “traumas and dramas” and because they both have a “warped

sense of humor.”

Her boyfriend is Myles Elsing, whom she considered so handsome when he

lived next door to her stepmom when they were kids.

And Martin’s business, Art for the Soul, has worked wonders for her

own soul.

“So I don’t let this keep me down,” she said, gesturing to her legs.

Though her family expected her to be resilient, they’re impressed.

“It’s hard to believe she’s this OK,” said Jenni Martin, 43.

On Newport Harbor, seven Labor Day weekends ago, on the “wrong harbor,

wrong day, wrong boat, wrong wave,” Valinda Martin survived a freak

boating accident that broke her back and rendered her paralyzed. She’d

rather not go into more detail, but she’s gone through the why-me’s and

offers this answer:

“That bad things happen to good people. There is no rhyme or reason

for the way things happen. It just is what it is.”

She tells it like it is, too.

About her legs, she says, “I kinda like to think that they’re asleep.

That’s my way of being kinder to myself.”

About being in a wheelchair, or “permanently sitting,” she says, “I’m

just short. I’m still a person.”

About her effect on others, she admits, “People use me as their gage.

I’m almost their worst nightmare. They see me. If I’m OK and I’m

crippled, how can bills, kids, etc . . . be so bad?

“I don’t have as much time as I used to, so I get to the point,”

Martin said. “That’s one thing that’s frustrating about being in a

wheelchair -- everything in my life takes me longer. So I don’t waste

time.”

VALINDA’S BOX

Life was the best she’d ever had it when the accident happened, Martin

said. She was living in Los Angeles, working in women’s clothing, dating

and doing the fun (this doesn’t mean wild, she insists), single woman’s

thing.

“In my 20’s, I was with the same man, so I had just begun really

getting to know me,” Martin said.

And then in one afternoon, life changed.

She lived with her sister for nine months immediately after leaving

the hospital. Jenni Martin, who specializes in professional expert

witness work in fraud and personal injury cases, had her entire house

transformed with hand ramps, lowered counters, gutted sinks and other

accommodations. She got Martin a car -- a green Mustang convertible

adjusted with hand controls -- and encouraged her to be independent.

“We’d send her on errands to do things -- going shopping, getting in

and out of the car and going to the personal trainer so she could get

strong,” Jenni Martin said. “We took kind of a no-nonsense approach.”

Valinda Martin says her sister is the reason she’s not in the “rubber

room” today.

After a couple years, reality stepped in.

“You jump up and say, OK this is the way it’s gonna be. You don’t have

much of a choice. You either get up and do that... or die inside,” Martin

said.

She started her own business three years ago called Art for the Soul,

selling inspirational American-handcrafted items on Balboa Island. Today,

she shuffles through past and present account books because it’s tax

season and the business has thrived.

She knows and likes the artists who hand-craft her goods (she wouldn’t

sell something made by someone who wasn’t a nice person) and attends

craft conventions around the country to recruit artists.

She buys work that is whimsical, inspirational, American-hand-crafted

or colorful. She compares her method to a box. The lid would be “is it

something she likes?” And the bottom?

“There is no bottom to my box,” she said. “This store has done it

150%. It makes me get up. It gets my creative juices going. This is my

life. You like me and you like the store, or you don’t get me and you

don’t get the store.”

When she’s not working, Martin keeps up with the active,

slightly-daredevilish Elsing -- a retired helicopter pilot for the

Newport Beach Police Department who has been with Martin for five years

now. She rides in the side car of his Harley motorcycle when the two want

to feel the open air. She swims with webbed feet on her hands during

vacations to Hawaii and plans to try parasailing soon.

“I’m able to do so much, and I’m sure people would say I’m still just

as much of a pain as I was then,” Martin said, laughing.

She and Jenni Martin see each other at least once a month. If they

don’t meet in Corona del Mar or Sacramento, they’ll catch up in Palm

Springs for some golf, and Valinda Martin will drive the cart with her

sister’s putter.

Driving makes her feel good, she said. She alternates between two cars

-- a big van and a sporty little white convertible, both adjusted with

hand controls. It’s one activity that makes her feel just like everybody

else -- everyone, after all, drives sitting.

“She keeps pulling up more energy and more determination and, well,

you know, it’s very unusual for someone in her situation to live as

independently as she does,” said Amber Rohl, Martin’s mother. “She

believes that she can ride above the challenge.”

AN INDEPENDENT STREAK

Martin insists on this. She would even rather break her foot than wait

for somebody to come home and help her unload a piece of furniture from

the car.

Elsing, though, was pretty upset when this indeed happened. Martin was

trying to carry a table from the car to the house one afternoon while he

was still at work. She broke her foot and didn’t even know it until two

days later when she found her sole had turned black.

“She was always a very determined child,” Rohl said.

When she drops something a little too far from her range of reach,

she’ll sit on the edge of her chair, lock her brakes and try about 14

times to retrieve it before asking for help.

“It’s so important for me to keep my independence, which is a good

thing and a bad thing,” she said.

Martin admitted she can’t help but feel her life was not supposed to

be spent in a wheelchair.

Jenni Martin said her sister has taken what was shocking and painful

and made the best of it.

“She’s so likable that she’s like the poster girl for parapalegics,”

she said.

Sitting outside her store and looking out toward the edge of Balboa

Island, Valinda Martin makes it look easy.

“How can anyone be unhappy here? I can’t complain,” Martin said.

She takes that back.

“Actually, I can complain. But I choose not to.”