Tabs for Wheelchairs gets people rolling

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This article was published 28/07/2018 (2832 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Big things come in small packages, and sometimes small things can lead to big things.

Luke Savoie, 24, now has a wheelchair that allows him to push an elevator button or get things off a counter.

Bryce Thiessen, 24, now has his first new wheelchair since he was a child.

Marlon Calakhan, 17, now has a wheelchair sized for him, making it easy to get around.

All three have these wheelchairs because of something as small as the tab which opens a can of pop.

Tabs for Wheelchairs helped all three get their new wheelchairs, and the fundraiser’s co-ordinator, Gwen Buccini, said it’s all thanks to generous pop and beer drinkers, pudding and fruit cup eaters, and owners of pets (who feed them food from cans) who take the time to save and donate the tabs which open them.

The wheelchairs are just three of 20 — seven sport wheelchairs and 13 specialized wheelchairs — Tabs for Wheelchairs has been able to donate during its 20 years of work.

“I needed this wheelchair because it can lift my feet up,” Savoie said recently. “The seat also goes up. I needed a chair I could lay back in and relax. My dad couldn’t always come to drag me into my bed.”

Savoie’s dad, Joe, said such wheelchairs aren’t cheap — they cost about $35,000 — so he was online numerous times looking for a cheaper used one across North America.

“I didn’t know, but the office manager at Holy Cross Church called (Tabs for Wheelchairs) and they put Luke on their list without my knowledge,” Joe said. “They contacted the company — Permobil — and they found a demo chair that was more affordable to them.”

Tabs for Wheelchairs began in 1998.

“I was at the gym at St. Mary’s Academy, and I saw this lady ask everyone for their cans to get the tabs” to fundraise for a wheelchair, Buccini said.

“I said I would get my kids to collect them at school. When I called her back in May, she said it didn’t happen. So I phoned three private and three public schools, and it just went from there.”

Buccini said it all culminated in spring 1999, when a specialized wheelchair was given to a five-year-old girl living with cerebral palsy, so she could go to kindergarten.

“It was so successful,” she said. “And to watch that individual get that wheelchair — and to know how it changes their lives — I decided to keep it going.”

Today, Tabs for Wheelchairs receives tabs from about 118 schools and more than 200 companies and groups.

“Most of the 20 recipients were chosen by the Rehabilitation Centre for Children or the Society of Manitobans with Disabilities,” she said.

For years, people were told to bring the tabs to Holy Cross School, but now Trailblazers Life Choices, a day program for adults living with disabilities, is now the collection depot.

It takes a lot of tabs to buy a wheelchair — and Buccini has done the math.

There are 1,500 tabs in a pound, and each pound is worth about 60 cents. That means for Tabs to buy a $6,000 wheelchair, it needs about 9,500 lbs. of tabs — or about 14 million. To buy a $10,000 wheelchair, add 6,500 lbs. or an extra 10 million tabs.

Until he died last year, Buccini’s son, Anthony, helped her sort and bag the tabs. Recently, to honour Anthony and celebrate the organization’s 20th anniversary, members of Buccini’s family donated $30,000 to Tabs for Wheelchairs to allow it to buy multiple specialized wheelchairs.

Cheryl Baines, a former employee at Holy Cross School, has also stepped forward to help. Orest Serediuk, the maintenance technician who has moved the tabs to the school’s storage room for years, is still there to move the tabs to the gymnasium for the wheelchair donation ceremony.

Each spring, there is an assembly at Holy Cross where the students see all the tabs that have been collected over the year — about 300 bags each stuffed with 50,000 tabs — and watch as someone gets a wheelchair. The tabs are picked up, free of charge, by YRC Reimer in bags provided for free by St. Boniface Bag, and trucked to Western Scrap Metal, where the charity is paid for the metal in the tabs.

This year, Tabs was able to buy and donate two wheelchairs, one for Calakhan and the other to the Manitoba Wheelchair Sport Association to be used in basketball programs.

Calakhan, who was born in the Philippines and diagnosed with cerebral palsy at birth, has needed to use a wheelchair his entire life. He was not allowed to immigrate with his family to Canada in 2006 because of his special needs, but in March 2016, he was finally allowed to make the trip.

“I was glad to get it,” he said. “This is easier to use.”

His mother, Analyn, said her son previously had to make do with an adult wheelchair.

“It was an ordinary, big wheelchair,” she said. “It was a great day when he got this one.”

Thiessen, with a huge smile on his face, said his chair is “good.”

His mother, Diane, said until he received the new wheelchair, he had been using another one for a decade.

“An occupational therapist looked at his needs,” she said. “The other wheelchair was just falling apart.”

Watching his son cruise his wheelchair around a gymnasium, Luke Savoie’s father summed up what Tabs for Wheelchairs has done for his family: “If it wasn’t for this charity, we wouldn’t have this.”

Savoie also thanked Tabs for Wheelchairs for giving him more than the ability to reach an elevator button or something on a counter.

“It’s great for being in public — I can now look eye to eye with people and not have people look down on me,” he said.

“I can have a proper conversation with people now.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca