You Won’t Find Her Sitting Still for Self-Pity

Becki McCafferty of Irvine is taking personal growth classes at Irvine Valley College, but it seems she ought to be teaching them.

In fact, the wheelchair-bound 31-year-old wouldn’t mind telling everyone about it.

McCafferty, who became disabled as a result of a swimming accident 10 years ago, gives motivational speeches about the handicapped, and she hopes that someday her speaking ability will make her self-sufficient.

Her message: “All of us are created with gifts, talents and abilities, and we are more than who we are outside physically. Who we are is who we are inside.”

That isn’t how she used to think of people, though.

McCafferty, who was once ranked fifth in the nation in the 200-meter butterfly, is a former champion swimmer at Mission Viejo High School who unsuccessfully tried for the Olympic swim team when she was just 15 and who has a degree in kinesiology from UCLA. She was completing lifeguard training in 1981 when she accidentally smashed into a sand reef.

Before the accident, she said, “I chose my friends by how popular they were and who they were in sports. I picked them more for what they looked like than who they were.”

She also thought about herself in much the same way: “Everything was about what I looked like, and I spent time getting myself tan and building my muscles to make me look better.”

“Now,” she says, “I know so much more on the value of the person’s inside, their heart, their sharing.”

McCafferty said she had a tough six years after the accident trying to adapt to the realization that she would be disabled for the rest of her life.

She also had to give up on her desire to earn a master’s degree at USC in exercise physiology--she was physically unable to operate the exercise equipment.

“I had a difficult adjustment after the accident,” she said, “but now I honestly believe you can overcome and go out and be happy and successful.”

That’s another message in the talks she gives to clubs and school groups from the elementary to the graduate level. “If I can reach one person, I feel good,” she said. “People have a different perspective, and not everyone hears” the message.

McCafferty herself certainly isn’t giving up on anything else.

For her studies at Irvine College, the IBM Corp. recently donated a complete adaptive computer system to the school to help her prepare “toward employment by increasing her marketability.”

In addition, she has for seven years been volunteering as a swimming instructor at a Mission Viejo junior wheelchair camp. She just ended a reign as Miss Wheelchair California, and she recently just missed winning the Miss Wheelchair USA title in a contest that concentrates on general knowledge.

“I did my best,” she said, noting that she studied for weeks beforehand.

McCafferty believes that she lives a normal life--that only her means of mobility is different. “I get up and have appointments to keep; I have hopes and dreams and goals, and I have a family just like every one else,” she said. Her parents, Carolyn and Robert McCafferty, live in Mission Viejo.

“I roll rather than walk. My arms are limited, but I can push the wheelchair. I get around slowly, but I get around.” She drives a hand-operated van equipped with a lift.

“My day is like everyone else’s. There are frustrations, but you just have to deal with it. I do what I have to do.”

One of her latest pursuits is scuba diving in a program called Ocean Escape. She is a certified scuba diver.

She volunteers for the group, which uses aquatic therapy for the physically challenged and for senior citizens as means of rehabilitation.

“It’s new, and I hope it works out,” she said. ‘I’d like to be part of it.”

Jack Kelly, 48, of Mission Viejo and Kristin Jones, 24, of Fullerton will compete in the first U.S. Transplant Games at the Indianapolis Conference Center, Wednesday through Saturday.

A competitor in the games, which are sponsored by the Kidney Foundation, must have had a heart, kidney, lung or liver transplant.

Jones, who had a liver transplant, will compete in badminton and bicycling events. Kelly, who received a kidney from a brother, will compete in tennis.

“This is really exciting,” said Jones, a student at the Southern California College of Optometry in Fullerton. “It ought to be interesting.”