Disabled Need Transportation to Fiesta

About once a month for 11 years, Sue Gordon of West Los Angeles has been organizing parties for people on the Westside who use wheelchairs and have other physical disabilities. For many, the disabilities make them unable to drive and force them to stay home most of the time.

So it is especially painful to Gordon and her friends that about half of the roughly 50 people who regularly attend the parties apparently will not make it to a Cinco de Mayo fiesta Gordon has planned at the Culver City Senior Citizens Center on May 5, because no transportation is available.

“I’m stuck,” Gordon said. “There are people who cannot get there unless I provide the transportation.”

Mid-Cities Assn., a Compton-based organization that for eight years has rented Gordon specially equipped vans for her parties, has taken its vehicles out of service indefinitely after being cited by the California Highway Patrol for safety code violations.

“We’re not renting the vans to anyone right now,” said Mid-Cities program coordinator Irma Wagoner. “They’re in the shop for repairs. We don’t like this any more than (Gordon) does.”

Gordon, who is confined to a wheelchair because of extensive paralysis resulting from multiple sclerosis, said she has been looking for a month for other transportation. So far, she said, she has been unable to find the specialized vehicles she needs--vans equipped with hydraulic lifts and roomy enough for four wheelchairs--for a reasonable rent.

Gordon is appealing for help in locating two such vans. She can be reached at (213) 836-1400.

“I could have the parties without the ones who can’t get there otherwise, but that doesn’t seem quite fair,” Gordon said.