GRANTS WILL HELP 2 PARALYZED SAN DIEGANS RETURN TO ACTION
Challenged Athletes Foundation announces $5.1 million in prizes
Daniel Lombardo and Anthony Galvan-Schaible both suffered paralyzing injuries in motorcycle accidents. But with the support of the Challenged Athletes Foundation this week, these North County men will soon be back to enjoying the athletic recreation and competition that they crave.
The two men were among 3,038 disabled athletes who received a combined $5.1 million in grants announced today by the San Diego nonprofit foundation. Lombardo, 26, of Oceanside will use his grant to buy a new Per4Max Thunder Tennis wheelchair. GalvanSchaible, 29, of San Marcos will likely use his grant to return to his first love of surfing.
Lombardo and GalvanSchaible are among the 38 percent of CAF applicants who are firsttime grant recipients. This year’s other grantees include applicants ages 2 to 76 from 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico as well as 52 other nations. Their disabilities include amputation, spina bifida, cerebral palsy, paraplegia and spinal cord injury.
Because of the pandemic, more than 400 of last year’s grantees chose to defer their prizes to this year because so many adaptive sports events were canceled last year. This includes Paralympic athletes who will be representing Team USA at the 2021 Paralympic Games, which have been postponed from last summer.
“Our belief in the power of sport to strengthen from the inside out is deeper than ever,” Virginia Tinley, CAF’s chief executive director, said in a statement. “Thanks to the generosity of supporters, many of these grants provide critical support for coping with the impact of the pandemic.”
For Lombardo, the grant will allow him to explore a sport he has only recently discovered but has found a great passion for: wheelchair tennis.
Lombardo, a Temecula native, grew up competing in motocross races all over the country. Originally, he had planned to become a professional motocross racer. But at age 18 he stepped away from the sport to focus on his education and a future career in mechanical engineering. Then, when he was 21, Lombardo was practicing on a dirt track in Pala when he had an accident and was paralyzed from the chest down.
The accident was devastating, but Lombardo said he discovered a new passion in his work, designing mechanical parts for an aerospace
firm in Carlsbad.
“Growing up, I dreamed of being a professional motocross racer, but I realized I could use my brainpower instead of my muscles, because the physical body can only withstand so much,” he said. “Now I’m possibly having just as much fun. I’ve found this new passion with aerospace design, and tennis has been a lot of fun for me, too. Tennis and my work have the same qualities that I enjoyed from motocross — teamwork, being disciplined with my eating habits and exercise, and staying on top of my physical game to perform to the next level.”
Lombardo started playing wheelchair tennis last year with the Adaptive Sports and Recreation Association in Point Loma. Every week, he drives down after work to practice the sport in a loaner wheelchair. He said the practice has been fun and rewarding and his skills are growing. But he hopes the new tennis wheelchair, custom-fit to his body, will make a big difference in his ability to play competitively. He’s hoping to take part in his first tournament later this spring.
“Doing that weekly, it has really changed and sparked more energy in my life,” he said. “I feel a lot better from exercising weekly, and I’ve enjoyed the social aspect of hanging out with friends to play. That’s been a big, great, awesome change in my life. I’m excited to see where this new adventure takes me.”
From the time he was in second grade, GalvanSchaible said going to North County beaches to surf or to the local mountains to snowboard was the center of his life.
“It’s almost like a church, your own meditation, your place to be with yourself and with the community that’s around you,” he said. “Surfing, snowboarding, skateboarding and all the other sports I’ve done, they’ve always been a piece of me.”
After earning a degree in sustainable technologies and environment agriculture, Galvan-Schaible worked as a consultant for small farms and landscaping companies. He was looking for a way to combine his work and his passion for travel and surfing when he moved to the island of Bali in February 2020. When the pandemic arrived last March, he decided to ride it out there.
While riding a motorcycle home from a friend’s house in Bali on July 29, 2020, he took a turn too fast and was thrown headfirst in a drainage ditch. He suffered a catastrophic spinal injury that resulted in quadriplegia. After he underwent surgery in Bali, his family chartered a medical flight home, and he’s been gradually recuperating in San Marcos in the months since.
His mother, Jamie Schaible, started a GoFundMe campaign that helped cover his flight home and other costs until insurance began covering more of his physical therapy and rehab expenses in recent months. Galvan-Schaible said he’s deeply grateful to the family, friends and strangers who donated to the campaign.
But one thing that’s still missing from his life is the water sports and other outdoor activities that were such a big part of his life before the accident. So when a friend told him about the Challenged Athletes Foundation and the adaptive surfing camps offered both here and in Hawaii, he decided to apply for a grant.
Galvan-Schaible said it may be several months before he’s well enough to get back into the water, and when he does, he’s not sure what form that will take. Perhaps he can use the grant money for an adaptive surfboard or for the travel expenses to attend a surf camp. Because he has spent the past eight months in hospitals, rehab centers and at home, he’s just eager to experience the healing power of nature once again.
“My next steps are getting the equipment to get me back doing the things that I love,” he said. “There are lot of toys that can be very helpful to me being able to experience and get outdoors again. That was my life before all this happened.”
To learn more about Galvan-Schaible’s recovery, visit his GoFundMe page at gofundme.com and search “Anthony’s Surgery, Aftercare & Therapy.” To learn more about the Challenged Athletes Foundation, visit challengedathletes.org.