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TwitThisMaking the Cheapest Wheelchair
Barely awake, Don Schoendorfer stepped onto the cold cement floor of his garage at 4 a.m. Determined to create the world's cheapest wheelchair, the Orange County, California, mechanical engineer squeezed in three hours every day before work, tinkering at a worktable he'd set up in his overstuffed garage.First he tried a chair with a conventional canvas-like seat, but scrapped it as too expensive. He knew he needed something cheap and durable to the point of indestructible. The chair had to traverse mountains, swamps and deserts, and endure heat and frost with minor upkeep. Many of the world's poor, Schoendorfer knew, live on less than $2 a day and could never dream of buying a Western-type wheelchair for hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Finally, he hit on it: the ubiquitous white plastic lawn chair. Perfect. Schoendorfer scouted out sales, buying chairs by the dozen for $3 apiece. Then he wandered the aisles of The Home Depot and Wal-Mart in search of the most inexpensive bike tires, even the most cost-effective screws.
During all the aisle-wandering, he flashed back to a road in Morocco almost 30 years ago. In 1977, he and his wife, Laurie, had stopped in Tétouan and, in the suffocating afternoon heat, saw a disabled woman dragging herself across the road, almost like a snake, using her fingernails to pull herself along. Schoendorfer remembers the disdain of the street beggars: The handicapped were considered even lower on the food chain than they were. On that dusty road, Schoendorfer decided to help.
Now, as he screwed two Toys "R" Us bike tires onto the chair, and welded on black metal casters and bearings, the MIT grad felt things come together. As he pirouetted the simple chair one last time, he thought, This may just be it.
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