GETTING A NEW RIDE
A local father and his son, who suffers from muscular dystrophy, loaded a motorized wheelchair into the family vehicle and delivered it this week to a woman whose son is afflicted with the same disease, after hearing how they were displaced by fire.
On Tuesday, The Signal published the story of Carmen Navarro who was forced from her Canyon Country apartment by fire Friday, unable to retrieve her son’s power wheelchair from her damaged apartment.
The very next day she got call from Ethan Martinez who, having read about her struggle for a place to live and her difficulty being deprived access to her son’s motorized chair — offered some help.
Martinez, whose own son, Peyton, also suffers from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, runs a program called Peyton’s Project, which tries to help others coping with the disease.
The mission of Peyton’s Project is: “Improve the quality of life for children and adults affected by Muscular Dystrophy through enabling devices, technology, research and to ultimately find a cure.”
And, while there is no cure for the disease which afflicts mainly boys, the Martinez family was able to ease some of the pain felt by others coping with it.
“I am really really thankful for what they did,” Navarro said about Martinez and the group behind Peyton’s Project.
Without the help of the family behind Peyton’s Project, Carmen Navarro would have had to wait another two months for repair work to finish on her damaged apartment and allow her access to the wheelchair inside.
Thanks to Martinez, the hardship posed by the unaccessible powered wheelchair was softened due to a simple kindness for Ethan and Peyton Martinez.
“A few hours ago, Peyton and I dropped off an electric powered mobility scooter to help Jesus move around on his own, Martinez told The Signal earlier this week.”
The Martinez family regularly attends the Center for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy at UCLA, considered by many, including Ethan Martinez, to be on the forefront of this awful disease.
“The founders of the CDMD have a son with DMD,” he told The Signal. “and they will stop at nothing to find a cure.”
On the afternoon of Jan. 19, fire broke out in the garage of the family’s apartment at the Park Sierra Apartments on the 27300 block of Rock Rose Lane in Canyon Country.
Firefighters doused the fire promptly and stopped it extending into the family’s apartment. The water used in dousing it, however, rendered the apartment uninhabitable for the next couple of months.
Trapped inside the apartment rendered off-limits was Jesus’ powered wheelchair.
So, when the Martinez family, father and son, delivered a replacement chair to the family staying at a motel on Sierra Highway, the Navarro family, mother and son, were ecstatic.
On Thursday, according to Carmen Navarro, a manager of the Park Sierra complex told her that an apartment had come available inside the complex in the last couple of days. The rent is higher than what the Navarro family were paying, leaving them to consider management’s offer.
Investigators with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, meanwhile, have determined the cause of the garage fire to be electrical, and that electrical problem originated with the water heater.