Giving a gift of access — and hope

By Tan Vinh
Seattle Times staff reporter

THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMES With help from his younger brother Amarillo, Americana Mulitauaopele rolls out the door to see the progress on ramps being built for the garage at his Kent home. Mike Vowels, who is heading up the effort to make the home wheelchair-accessible, talks on a cellphone at left.

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As a favor to a friend, Mike Vowels agreed to advise a recently injured man on where to place wheelchair ramps around his four-bedroom home.

If the homeowner couldn't afford the project, well, that "wasn't my problem," Vowels recalled thinking that September afternoon. Vowels planned to spend two hours at the Kent home, then leave.

But Vowels, 49, then heard that the homeowner was a former Army tank commander whose spinal cord was crushed in an accident in Iraq on June 16, two weeks before he was scheduled to return home.

He heard the commander was 29, the same age Vowels was when he lost control on the ski slopes at Alpental and slammed into a tree, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down.

He heard that the veteran, with a wife and four children, could not afford to make the entire house accessible by wheelchair, and it drove him to tears.

And that is how 10 weeks after his first visit, Vowels is still a part of Staff Sgt. Americana Mulitauaopele's life. He has raised $30,000 to buy construction supplies and has recruited construction workers to donate their time to make the Mulitauaopele family's home wheelchair-accessible.

On Saturday, with the wheelchair ramp in Mulitauaopele's garage barely finished, Vowels was already talking about building ramps to the living room and the back yard and widening the doors. He was figuring how soon he can lower the sink and make the rest of the master bathroom handicap-accessible. Vowels would have to raise $50,000 more for those projects.

How to help Anyone wishing to contribute to help make Americana Mulitauaopele's home wheelchair-accessible may send checks, payable to the Americana Donation Fund, to any US Bank branch. Donors also may contact Mike Vowels for more details at MikeVowelsInc@msn.com.

Vowels, who had a successful career in construction after his skiing accident, also has taught Mulitauaopele (pronounced Moo-lee-tao-al-belly) that there are second acts in life.

"Looking at Mike, I know not to give up," the six-year Army veteran said.

Before, Mulitauaopele said, "I had lost hope."

On the morning of a sandstorm, Mulitauaopele, of the 1st Armored Division, had left his compound in Najaf, south of Baghdad, when a car sped toward his M-1 Abrams tank.

Fearing a suicide bomber, his tank driver avoided the car by taking a hard left but then slammed into a telephone pole that fell on Mulitauaopele, whose upper body was outside the commander's hatch.

The driver sped off, his intentions unclear. Mulitauaopele's spinal cord was crushed, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down.

	Staff Sgt. Americana Mulitauaopele of Kent, with Angelique, 7, one of his four children.

Mulitauaopele, from American Samoa, moved to Western Washington to be close to the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Seattle and to his brother, a sergeant stationed at Fort Lewis.

He was always the first to break through doors in raids on suspected insurgents during his 15 months in Iraq. But confined to a hospital bed for nearly four months, Mulitauaopele admitted he never had been so scared. He often lay awake crying, wishing to die.

"Every day, I have to deal with waking up and not being able to take care of my family anymore, not be able to take my kids to school or cook for my family," he said.

He doesn't talk about his feelings on the war, but says that "it kills" him that he was just 14 days away from finishing his tour in Iraq and returning to his family at the military base in Friedberg, Germany.

One moment changed everything, he said.

Mulitauaopele didn't want to hear condolences: How could anyone know what he was going through?

Then, he met Vowels, a retired contractor, whose wisdom went beyond talking about ramps and rails.

"I know the fear," Vowels said. "He is in a very dark part of his life. He is going to be somebody new, but he does not know who this new person will be. He is not a tank commander anymore. He is in a place where he does not know what it will be like in the future. But he has got to get back to being the man in charge. He has to reclaim ownership of his life."

Just as Vowels did 19 years ago.

After the March 24, 1985, skiing accident, Vowels gave up his carpentry career but used that knowledge to become a project manager on commercial buildings, a career that allows him to live comfortably in Duvall. Vowels, who has two adopted young children and a fiancée, has since retired from the commercial-construction business.

Life doesn't end in a wheelchair, Vowels told Mulitauaopele. It's just a new start, a new challenge. "Don't give up," he reminds Mulitauaopele every day.

Mulitauaopele does biceps curls to build strength so he can dress himself instead of relying on his wife, Lorraine. And because of Vowels, the one-time career soldier is ready to start thinking about Act II.

Tan Vinh: 206-515-5656 or tvinh@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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