Going the extra thousands of miles

Deirdre Newman

For 2 1/2 years, two boys from Prem Kumar’s village in Fiji would

carry him every morning from his bed to a nearby bench under a mango

tree. And for two years, every evening, the two boys would carry the

paralyzed man back from the bench to his bed.

And so it went, day after day -- until earlier this month, when

Susan Shaw and her team of volunteers got lost and ended up in front

of his house.

They were in Fiji to deliver wheelchairs through the Free

Wheelchair Mission. Kumar wasn’t on their list, but because of the

wrong turn, they discovered he could use one.

“We changed his life just like that,” Shaw said. “It was a miracle

under a mango tree.”

This is Shaw’s seventh trip to Fiji. Some have been for business

with her company, Divegear, which specializes in clothing for the

scuba diving industry; the rest have been to deliver wheelchairs. She

was inspired to volunteer with the mission in 2001 after seeing one

of the wheelchairs outside of her church.

The wheelchairs are designed with the minimalist attitude that a

simple chair on wheels that can be made for $40 or less is all that’s

needed. All it took was a patio chair with mountain bike tires.

The Newport Coast resident found her calling as a volunteer,

deciding she wanted to help Don Schoendorfer, founder and president

of the Free Wheelchair Mission, in his efforts. She wanted to start

helping the disabled poor in an area of the world she was familiar

with through her business travels -- Fiji.

Her goal is to make sure that everyone who needs a wheelchair in

Fiji has one. She estimates 10,000 people on the various islands of

Fiji need them. So far, she has raised funds for about 1,100

wheelchairs.

Shaw brings containers of 550 wheelchairs to the country. Before

containers are shipped, Shaw usually has to raise $22,000. For this

trip, she had only raised half of that amount before she left.

Shaw left Orange County on Jan. 12 for a week in Fiji. Traveling

with her was Cal Wadsworth of Salt Lake City and his daughter, Kalie,

who is in college in Oregon. Schoendorfer connected Wadsworth with

Shaw after Wadsworth expressed interest in helping out with the

mission. He contributed $10,000 to the effort and then decided he

wanted to help distribute the wheelchairs himself.

Wadsworth said he was impressed by Shaw’s energetic commitment to

the people of Fiji.

“She’s almost an icon, if you will, on the island,” Wadsworth

said. “Everywhere we went, she was recognized by the Fijian people.

They would walk up to us and say, ‘Wheelchairs, Susan’.”

The day the volunteers landed in Viti Levu, the main island, they

were whisked to a press conference put on by the Satya Sai

Organization, which helped store, assemble and distribute the chairs.

There was already a waiting list of 250 recipients and the press

conference enabled her to spread the word quickly to the entire

country that the wheelchairs were available.

Potential recipients had to go through a detailed process to get

one. They filled out a card with their name, age, disability and

confirmation that they couldn’t afford to buy a wheelchair. One of

Shaw’s friends, who owns a business in Fiji, set up a database to

track every potential recipient. When the Satya Sai Organization

receives the forms, they go out into the villages and do assessments

to make sure the need is valid, Shaw said.

“These aren’t just chairs that are indiscriminately given out,”

Shaw said.

Shaw and her team try to visit the more remote outlying and

interior areas because that’s where the need is the greatest, she

said.

After the press conference, the volunteers headed to the remote

interior of Viti Levu to distribute a wheelchair to Elenoa, 63, who

is paralyzed. The elderly Fijian woman was sitting on a mat in the

doorway of her shack, waiting patiently.

“She crawled to [the wheelchair],” Shaw said. “Then she started

rolling herself. She was so excited.”

Most of the people who are paralyzed or disabled in Fiji depend on

relatives and neighbors to carry them everywhere they go. The

wheelchairs liberate them and enable many to access people and places

they’ve never seen, even if they’re just a stone’s throw away.

One of the next recipients they visited, also sitting in her

doorstep waiting, was lifted into the chair and rolled across the

grass to her family’s house. It was the first time she had ever made

the short trip, Shaw said.

“It just changes lives in so many ways that might seem small to us

but are so huge to them,” Shaw said.

Another day, the volunteers went to Sabeto Nadi to deliver a

wheelchair to Babita Dutt, an 18-year-old with cerebral palsy. The

tops of her feet were blackened with calluses from crawling for

years.

“She won’t have [the calluses] next year,” Shaw said. “She’s just

exuberant.”

The saddest situation occurred when the volunteers visited a woman

in one of the poorer villages. They walked up the hill to deliver a

wheelchair to a woman who had been locked inside a small room by her

son when he went into town. The only way to communicate with the

woman was through a small screen window.

“We left the wheelchair at her door,” Shaw said. “She was crying

and said, ‘God bless you’ in Fijian.”

The people of Fiji are incredibly generous and the volunteers were

constantly touched by their kindness, Shaw said.

Since the group was staying in the city of Nandi, they had to get

to Latoka every day to deliver the wheelchairs. On one of their first

few days, they hired a driver and every day after that, he would stay

and build wheelchairs on his own time.

“The people want to find other people to help,” Shaw said. “That’s

the nature of their kindness and that’s why I’m taking them there

first.”

Now that she’s back in Newport Coast, Shaw is hoping to raise the

rest of the funds for the wheelchairs she just delivered, so she can

start raising funds for the next container. She intends to accompany

every container she takes to see the grateful look on the faces of

people who are transformed by the gift of mobility, she said.

Her fervent dedication to enhancing the lives of Fijians is

inspiring, Wadsworth said.

“She appears to be 100% committed to seeing that every person in

Fiji who has a need gets it fulfilled,” he said. “She’s high-energy,

passionate, very outspoken. I think she’s a pretty good leader in

this endeavor -- a leader not by barking out orders telling people

what to do, but more by example, by her actions.”

* DEIRDRE NEWMAN covers Costa Mesa. She may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at deirdre.newman@latimes.com.