ROMANCE ON WHEELS : Couple’s Wedding Will Open an Apartment for the Disabled, but Many More Are Needed

They met in the laundry room of their apartment building. Their friendship blossomed into romance when he filled the tire of her wheelchair with air at a gas station. Now they’re headed for the altar. And in the process they’ll be opening a door to someone else who desperately needs the special facilities at Casas Del Rio, an apartment building designed for the handicapped.

The happy couple, Bobby Schoonover and Vicki Ormsbee, are both wheelchair-bound. They were among the original tenants when the three-story, 40-unit apartment complex on La Veta Avenue in Orange opened a year and a half ago. After the wedding, probably later this year, they will move into her apartment.

Casas Del Rio, which is managed by the nonprofit Living Opportunity Management Co., is one of only two low-rent apartment buildings for the disabled in Orange County. The need for more such apartments is dramatically illustrated by the Casas waiting list: It has more than 140 names, according to the building’s administrator, L.P. (Bud) Koranda. The building--constructed with federal funds on land provided by the Rehabilitation Institute of Southern California--has had a waiting list since pre-construction days.

The other low-rent, all-handicapped building in Orange County, Carbon Creek Shores in Anaheim, is sponsored by the Dayle McIntosh Center for the Disabled. Both buildings serve low-income handicapped people, charging 30% of a tenant’s monthly income. Ormsbee pays $136 per month rent, Schoonover $170. To qualify, a tenant must have an annual income of $14,500 or less for a single person, $16,550 or less for a couple.

A tremendous need exists for more such buildings, Koranda said. “Our waiting list is ridiculous.” Dayle McIntosh officials estimate that 370,000 physically and mentally handicapped people live in Orange County; the two all-handicapped buildings provide a total of 80 apartments.

Officials at both buildings say that disabled people unable to get into the two apartment complexes generally wind up living with relatives or finding housing on the open market, where rents often eat up much of their monthly incomes.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development subsidizes the buildings, Koranda said, paying the difference between market-rate rents for similar-size apartments in the area and what the tenant actually pays.

“We know from our dealings with our clients that there very definitely is a shortage of affordable housing, and it’s especially bad for disabled people,” said Bob Griffith, chief deputy director of the Orange County Social Services Agency. “It is extremely difficult to find places that are both affordable and have the right kind of services and the physical layout for the disabled.”

Before moving to Casas, Schoonover had lived with an Orange County family. Although he had his own room with them, he prefers his apartment at Casas because he has more privacy. “I have freedom now.” Ormsbee lived in a house in Orange County where she also had only one room to herself and shared other living quarters.

Apartments at Casas Del Rio have extra-wide hallways, switches on the front of stoves rather than the top and showers with pull-down seats instead of baths--all to make it easier for those in wheelchairs. Residents also have several alarms in each apartment that they can use to summon help in an emergency. The front door, which originally could be opened from the outside by inserting a key in the lock, now is electronically controlled so that a wheelchair-bound tenant can open the doors by inserting a card in a stanchion.

All apartments have balconies, and the ground floor of the building has a community kitchen for those who want to cook for friends, as well as a well-stocked library and a community room. A park next to the building offers expanses of green grass and specially marked stops with suggestions for exercises that the more mobile among the building’s residents can perform.

The tenants range in age from 18 to more than 60. There is only one married couple among the tenants. “A lot were married,” Koranda said. But for “people with handicaps, particularly if it comes later in life, it ends up in divorce.” He said a number of the tenants work, some at the Rehabilitation Institute next door and others at fast-food places. Some, like Schoonover, attend college classes.

“This (Casas) is fantastic,” Schoonover said. “The halls are spacious, and you don’t have to keep banging into the walls. There’s easy access.”

To live at Casas Del Rio, which means homes by the river , at least one tenant of each apartment must be handicapped or disabled, yet capable of living independently. No medical care is provided.

Ormsbee, 25, was shot 3 years ago in an Anaheim apartment by the man who was then her boyfriend. (He was later convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to 3 years.) “The bullet went through my neck and hit my spinal cord,” she said. “I don’t think it went all the way through my spinal cord. What it did was knock it out of place.

“So I have a lot of muscle and nerve damage. When I tell my legs to walk, the message isn’t getting through to my legs. But we’re working on it. By the grace of God we’re going to do it.”

Schoonover suffers from a condition that over the years caused a narrowing of the spine and 9 years ago put him in a wheelchair. He looks far younger than his 44 years, and his weightlifting has made his arms and chest muscular.

He worked as a draftsman until his company lost a Defense Department contract and laid him off a few years back. Now he studies drafting at Orange Coast College, emphasizing mathematics so that when he lands another job he will be able to hold it. He receives federal disability payments.

Koranda, a resident of Casas Del Rio with his son, who has cerebral palsy, is obviously fond of Schoonover and Ormsbee.

Ormsbee is a “very enthusiastic” woman, he said, a “very devout Christian. I take her over to my church every once in a while and have her talk because she’s in a wheelchair and she’s so exciting and enthusiastic. It’s great for people who don’t have any real problems to see somebody like that and then hear them talk about Christ the way she does. She’s amazing.”

Ormsbee’s life is built around religion. Asked what she does for recreation, she replied, “I go to church.” She teaches the Bible on Saturdays at a Garden Grove home for the mentally retarded, saying that despite her pupils’ handicaps, “they understand completely. A lot of people underestimate them, but they’re very aware of what’s going on.”

Ormsbee receives state disability payments and earns some extra money by working an hour a day supervising children on the playground at Taft Elementary School in Orange.

Both Ormsbee and Schoonover drive automobiles with hand controls for the accelerator and brake; for recreation, both enjoy fishing or driving to a lake to feed ducks.

They said that although they saw each other from time to time around the apartment building, it wasn’t until one day in the laundry room last December that they decided to date.

For some reason, Schoonover said, when he saw Ormsbee doing her laundry “we got to talking for a length of time . . . 2 hours and 45 minutes to be exact.” Schoonover asked Ormsbee for a date, and a week later they went to dinner.

More dinners followed, along with discussions of religion, and then one day at a gas station, Schoonover, in his wheelchair, put air into the tires of Ormsbee’s wheelchair.

“She bent over and I kissed her on the head,” he remembered with a huge grin. After that, things got serious. “Neither one of us wanted a commitment,” he said, “but it grew into one.”

Ormsbee and Schoonover have been counseled during their engagement by their pastor, Clifford G. Self of the Jubilation Christian Center in Orange, and have decided that on July 1 they will pick a wedding date. They hope to have at least one child.

Self said Ormsbee and Schoonover “are really a courageous couple. They won’t sit down and play dead. Whatever comes their way, they’ll get up and keep pressing on.”

We’ve Got to Get Away, Toto

Dorothy did it, and ended up in Oz. But what happens to Orange County children when they run away from home? If you’ve been a runaway, or if you’re the parent of a runaway, tell us about your experience. What advice do you have on how to prevent a child from running away? And what would you say to those who have already taken off?

And These Are My Moms . . .

Is growing up very different for children of gay or lesbian parents? How do parents explain the situation to the child? To the neighbors? How do the other children--and other parents--react? If yours is a gay or lesbian family, in or out of the closet, tell us what life is like for you.

Did You Plan Your Parenthood?

. . . Or was it accidental? Whether your children came along right on schedule or at the worst possible time, whether you were using birth control or already knitting booties, tell us the circumstances and how you feel about it now. And what have you told the kids?

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