COSTA MESA : Ms. Wheelchair America Has Spirit

The curbs in front of Dawn Blodgett’s home don’t have cutouts for wheelchairs.

So every weekday morning for 12 years, her mother, Estetta, walked Dawn to the corner, lifted her out of her wheelchair and yanked the chair over the curb. She would then put Dawn back in so her daughter could wait for the school bus with the rest of the students on the sidewalk.

The ritual was repeated each afternoon when the bus returned to bring Dawn home.

“There are just so many simple things you never think of,” Estetta Blodgett said about what her daughter has to endure in order to get around in a world not easily accessible to her.

Last week, the woman who still can’t cross her own street without help was named Ms. Wheelchair America. It wasn’t really a beauty pageant--it was more like a podium. Her crown gives her the responsibility of telling the world about what it is like to be disabled.

“I really just want to get out into the public and let people know that people in chairs are really capable,” said Dawn Blodgett, 20, an Orange Coast College junior, who has cerebral palsy. “The biggest misconception is that you don’t have a life. People are always so amazed that we work, we have families and go to school. We just do it on wheels.”

The road to Denver, where she took the top honors Aug. 7, started a year ago when Dawn was named Ms. California Wheelchair. She didn’t think she had a chance in the national contest. For one thing, she wasn’t even old enough to compete.

“I went just to have fun,” she said.

But she did win, beating out 13 other woman from around the country with her impassioned speeches on such topics as getting the disabled to vote and what life is like in a wheelchair. She is a natural, spinning out the rules of the Americans With Disabilities Act the way preachers churn out verses of the Bible.

Many of the tales are based on painful personal memories. Like the time she took the Estancia High School speech team, which she coaches, to an awards program at Cypress College in December and was refused entry. The usher eventually found a back door big enough to let her chair pass through, after she reminded him of her rights--and that she had a lawyer.

“The student told me I would have to wait outside the building. It was about 40 degrees out,” she said.

Blodgett said she realized she was disabled when she was 9. Her older brothers and sisters were all able bodied, so she thought when she grew up, she would be, too.

“I thought, ‘Oh, when you get older, it goes away,’ ” she said.

She went to elementary school and realized all the other children her age didn’t have wheelchairs. Then she got angry.

She also had to endure the taunts of her classmates. Her nickname was “six legs” because of the walker she used to guide herself around school. Often, students would place it just out of her reach or take her somewhere and leave, she said. In fourth grade, she was locked in the school bathroom. She sat there for more than an hour before her teacher found her.

“You know, kids are just mean,” she said, shrugging off the memories.

For many years, she closed herself off from the world, rarely leaving her bedroom. When people asked why she was in a wheelchair or what it was like, they would be met with the sharp reply: “None of your business.”

Today, she tells everyone who will listen.

As Miss Wheelchair America, she is gearing up to travel around the country with her mother and Sam, her service dog and constant companion.

“We never hear about someone who is in a chair doing something positive,” Dawn Blodgett said, as the three of them made their way to a table in a local restaurant. People stopped and stared as Sam plopped down under the table, his tail sticking out in the aisle. “Even though I am in a chair, I can do anything.”