Woman wheels, deals on the Web
| Friday, Feb 10 2006 01:45 PM
Last Updated Saturday, Mar 28 2009 11:19 AM
Sofiea Clerico has had enough. She's tired of feeling victimized and vulnerable, and she's certain that, among the tens of thousands of Americans in her situation, many must feel the same way.
Now she's doing something about it.
Clerico has undertaken an ambitious effort to match wheelchair users in need of replacement chairs, backup chairs, spare parts and advice with people who might be able to provide them.
She has launched a not-for-profit Web site (wheelchair.weblogger.com) designed to match buyers with sellers -- and on a grander scale than perhaps has ever existed before. The greater the number of buyers and sellers, she reasons, the greater the availability of suitable matches. And since her Kern County circle of contacts isn't big enough, she's going national.
This, in her view, is how it works:
"Grandpa suddenly needs a wheelchair," Clerico explains, "so you go out and buy him the very best, because you love him, and you believe he deserves it. Then, a month or so later, Grandpa dies. So you take the wheelchair and try to resell it. ... You're insulted by the offers, so you put it in a shed somewhere and store it.
"I want to connect all the wheelchairs that are in sheds with the people who need them."
Depending on whether or not they are motorized, and the nature and severity of the disability they are intended to serve, wheelchairs can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars apiece to well over $10,000.
Medical insurance providers, be they private or government-run, usually pay all or some portion of the cost. Those organizations, or their agents,decide if a wheelchair is repairable and at what point it ought to be replaced. But Medicare, the nation's single most prominent insurance provider, will not replace a wheelchair more often than once every five years, except in rare cases. Other providers have similar guidelines.
Clerico's motorized wheelchair has broken down often enough for these truths to emerge: Replacement chairs are sometimes needed more often than every five years; and, as a result, many users would benefit tremendously from the availability of backup chairs.
For Clerico, who has relied on a wheelchair for mobility for 29 years, that would mean three rigs: a primary motorized chair, a backup motorized chair and a manual chair, which can come in handy for maneuvering in bathrooms and other tight spots.
No insurance provider Clerico is aware of, government-operated or otherwise, will give (or lease) three chairs to one person.
Clerico, 62, was injured in a solo automobile crash on Jan. 12,1972, while driving to her job at Belridge Oil Co. one foggy morning. She doesn't know how she lost control of her brand-new BMW -- only that her seat belt somehow broke and she was ejected. If she'd made it to work that day, she says, she'd have taken over as vice-president in charge of safety and worker's compensation issues.
By her reckoning, she has had 16 surgeries for her spinal cord injury, and she stopped counting after 23 hospitalizations, many of which lasted several months.
She has survived five bouts with septicemia, a condition that's fatal in about half its victims.
Clerico, a 1956 graduate of Bakersfield High School, credits good DNA for her enduring feistiness. The youngest child and only daughter of Ed and Susie Bussell (her brother is prominent Bakersfield businessman Al Bussell), she figures she inherited her stubbornness from her mother. "She basically ran the family ranch," Clerico says. "She was 5 feet tall, very effeminate, with the soul of Genghis Khan."
That family trait is readily apparent to anyone who has ever read the Village News, the weekly newspaper with which Clerico has been associated for 14 years. Erin Clerico, her son and the newspaper's owner, is in the process of selling the News to a local buyer; Sofiea hopes to remain a contributor.
With her journalistic responsibilities diminishing, she believes she can now carve out the time and energy to promote her Web site.
We ambulatory folks like to think that wheelchair users are able to live productive lives with the assistance of their mobility equipment. A great number do. But the fact is, wheelchairs just aren't as dependable, or as resilient, as legs.
"I've burned up seven, eight, 10 motors in my time," Clerico says. "They're just like cars. They run down, they break. I'm sitting here now, two years away from a new wheelchair, and I need $2,500 in repairs. It's so frustrating."
Clerico hopes to set up a nonprofit foundation, in association with wheelchair.weblogger.com, that would purchase used wheelchairs for a standardized amount -- or issue tax-credit receipts, as is done now by many charities that accept donated wheelchairs.
One of wheelchair.weblogger.com's most useful roles, however, may be in simply helping wheelchair users build on each other's experience and encouragement.
"We need to innovate and find ways to connect," Clerico says. "Wheelchair users get pushed around sometimes because there's so little cumulative wisdom. This is one of those orphan issues.
"I really want to make a difference," she says, "in the lives of people who are in my situation."
You can reach Clerico at sophiea@weblogger.com, or by phone: 323-8892.
