Kevin Veillon says he’s used to making...

Kevin Veillon says he’s used to making his own way in life.

“I’ve never had anybody give me any help before,” said the 24-year-old Lomita man from a hospital in Long Beach. “I’ve pretty much gotten everything on my own.”

But a freak accident on the night of June 10 at a Laguna Hills barbecue changed that.

Veillon was paralyzed from the chest down after he mistakenly dived into the shallow end of a condominium swimming pool, splitting his head open, shattering a vertebra and crushing his spinal column. “I immediately lost all feeling in my legs,” he said.

Ever since, Veillon has been getting used to people--many of them people he’s never met--doing things for him.

“I’m very grateful to all the people helping out,” said the former construction worker.

Lisa Koski, Veillon’s 22-year-old fiancee, spends 12 hours a day with him at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, where he takes hours of rehabilitative therapy every day. “She’s not missed a day in four months,” he said. “I love her very much.”

Koski’s parents, Bee and Dick Koski of Harbor City, are raising money for a down payment on a mobile home for their daughter and future son-in-law. So far, 100 people--most of them friends or business associates of the Koskis--have kicked in for an Oct. 6 dinner-dance and raffle in San Pedro. The “Friends-of-Kevin-Veillon” trust fund already contains $3,500. People who wish to attend can reach Bee Koski at 534-1367.

Trying to help Veillon was easy for the Koskis. “We like the young man and he seems to be crazy about our daughter,” said Bee Koski. “She loves him so much.”

Several friends of the young couple have volunteered to help install ramps, widen doorways and modify bathrooms in the double-wide mobile home to accommodate Veillon’s wheelchair.

Surgery and daily physical therapy have given Veillon back the use of his right arm and hand, but the former construction worker is not expected to walk again. “It was very, very hard to accept this at first, but it’s getting easier,” he said.

Lisa Koski, who said the events since June have brought her closer to the man she plans to marry, said she accepts the “reality” of his paralysis, “but in my heart and in the back of my mind I always pray and keep reminding myself that miracles have happened to others and they can happen to him.”