His Feet Are Wings : Teen-Ager Born Without Arms Soars Over Everyday Obstacles

Caesar Duenas sits on the floor of his high school shop class, welding two metal plates together with an acetylene torch held deftly between his toes.

When he finishes, his teacher whistles with appreciation and pronounces the weld superior to most he sees at Don Bosco Technical Institute, a private Catholic boy’s high school in Rosemead.

The 16-year-old demurs with a shy grin. “I just got lucky on that one,” he says.

Born without arms, Caesar has taught himself to do almost anything with his feet. His penmanship is neat and precise, and he maintains a 3.5 grade-point average. He runs cross-country and placed second last year in a regional two-mile competition, using a sideways loping stride to balance himself.

This fall, he was one of six American students chosen by a Spanish bank to retrace Christopher Columbus’ journey from Spain to the Dominican Republic.

At home in Monterey Park, he often makes spaghetti from scratch for 10 people.

In a world where many youngsters never achieve their full potential, Caesar has earned the admiration of his teachers and peers.

“The first couple of weeks, I was a little apprehensive,” said teacher Ron Mendoza, whose class in thermal analysis requires students to handle heavy machinery and flaming torches. “But once I watched him, I realized he could do what the other boys could and that he didn’t want to be treated any differently.”

Caesar, who wears his black hair buzzed short on the sides and long on top, has the typical teen-ager’s taste for funk and rap music. He also has a girlfriend named Sandra, whom he met in Madrid last summer.

As he sat at Don Bosco’s outdoor lunch tables one recent day eating a burrito, he described a piranha he saw in the Orinoco River on a recent trip. “It was THIS big,” he explained. So lithe are his movements that it takes a moment to realize that he is using his feet to sketch the cannibal fish in the air.

It seems perfectly natural, too, that Caesar is picking up his burrito with his feet and chugging an orange juice the same way. His friends haven’t noticed in years. “Caesar thinks he can do anything,” said his mother, Leonora. “He certainly doesn’t see himself as being held back in any way.”

His condition, called bilateral upper extremity amelia, is rare. Doctors don’t know what causes it but say it’s not necessarily genetic and probably would not be passed to his own children.

When Caesar was 6 months old, his mother enrolled him in UCLA’s Child Amputee Prosthetic Program, where doctors, psychologists, social workers and therapists work with children. For a while, Caesar used artificial arms, but he never liked them and gave them up at 12.

“He was a really eager kid, always willing to try,” said Joanna Patton, an occupational therapist who worked with Caesar at UCLA. “He wanted to be independent.”

Throughout his life, his family--including two brothers, ages 6 and 8, and a stepfather--have brainstormed for solutions to difficult problems for Caesar, such as how to open doors (Caesar uses his chin) and how to get dressed (Velcro fasteners and hooks nailed into the wall provide leverage).

“I told him, you’ll figure out a way and if you need help, of course I’m here,” his mother said.

“You have to believe in your children and assist them but not do everything for them,” she said.

Indeed, the boy learned to write at the same time as his peers. He was using scissors by age 4. He won over YMCA administrators who worried that he would drown, and learned to swim like a fish.

But society can be cruel. A librarian would not allow Caesar to flip through books with his feet. An elementary school teacher said it would be unsanitary for him to tap on computer keyboards with his toes.

Each time, Caesar and his mother would march into an office and politely insist on the boy’s rights.

Leonora Duenas, a former elementary school teacher, instructs employees and supervisors at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power on how to avoid discrimination.

“We have prejudices about the disabled, and we’ve been conditioned that we have to take care of them,” she said. “It’s a definite societal problem. . . .”

Two years ago, Don Bosco officials balked when Leonora Duenas asked them to enroll her son in the school’s highly regarded college-preparatory program that blends academics and technical training.

Jerry Waite, dean of technology at Don Bosco, said the school worried that, without arms, Caesar could not handle the laboratory work involved. But after prodding from his mother, they tested Caesar’s physical dexterity.

“The teacher showed him how to install an electronic chip into a board,” Waite said. “Then Caesar sat down and took his shoes off and proceeded to do it with his feet faster than the teacher could with his hands.”

Caesar laughs when he recalls those first days, saying that some overprotective teachers fussed over him. “They didn’t know if I could get my locker open or carry my books by myself.”

One teacher wasn’t sure that Caesar could take notes and offered to let him sit at the front of the class and use her tape recorder. He politely declined.

“He’s very self-sufficient and I think that’s something that’s hard for those of us with two arms and two legs to understand,” said Diane Cabrales of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights organization that nominated Caesar for the Christopher Columbus trip.

During the two-month trek, students took classes in Spanish about the early explorers and the geography of Spain. Cabrales said Caesar was the only American student invited to go back to Spain to participate in next year’s program. “He was a definite hit,” she said.