Those of us who use wheelchairs know the extreme danger and frustration of a chair breaking, and it never happens when we are safe at home.  For the second time within six months, it happened to me.

I was scheduled to do a Disability Awareness-Injury Prevention Program at the Salvation Army Center in Blue Island.  I arrived at the center, unloaded the chair and was transferring from the car, when it broke.  I was able to grab on to the car door to keep from falling to the ground.  Fortunately, a staff member saw what happened and came to my aid but I went into a full-blown panic. "I'm 15 miles from home."  "Karl, (my husband) can't leave his job."  "Maybe my neighbor can get my old chair out of the attic."  "What if neighbor isn't home?"  "What if the shop is closed before I get there?"  "I'm already nursing a pressure sore. The old chair might make it worse."  "What am I going to do?"

What I did was this.  I called my neighbor, went to my house and she got the old chair into my car.  I called Home Health Depot in Broadview and they said to bring the chair in.  When I got to the parking lot, they were expecting me and a service tech (sorry, I do not remember his name) came out to the car.  I asked him to take the old chair out so that I could go inside to take care of paperwork and he said, that I was welcome, but that if I was okay sitting in the car, I could wait there. "Wait in the car"  "Don't I have to leave it for a week or more?" He said it would take about 20 minutes to fix.  That's about 10 days and 15 hours less than the nightmare of my last wheelchair repair.

Home Health Depot in Broadview is the place I'm going for my new chair.  They are customer friendly and they "get it." We use wheelchairs because we need them!

 
Veteran Entrepreneur Kaney O'Neill, president and founder of O'Neill Contractors, Inc. located in Des Plaines, IL received the 28th Annual Woman Veteran of the Year Award from the Women's Business Development Center on September 17, 2014.

An accident while serving in the U.S. Navy left Kaney O'Neill a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the chest down.  She set out to rebuild her future by attending Northwestern University, earning a B.S. in Learning and Organizational Change and M.A. degree in Learning Sciences.  When jobs did not materialize after graduation, she followed in the footsteps of several generations of her family by entering into the roofing business in 2007.  O'Neill Contractors, Inc. specializes in roofing, roof waterproofing, carpentry, insulation, and flooring installation for corporate and government clients that have included Boeing, Northern Illinois University and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.  Her goal is to grow to $5 million in yearly revenues in the next five years.

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