Activist Pushes for the Rights of Disabled

Randy Horton has difficulty communicating verbally, but that hasn’t stopped him from being heard loud and clear.

There were those occasions, for instance, when he parked his wheelchair on a Los Angeles street, in front of a moving bus, to protest the lack of wheelchair access on Rapid Transit District buses.

Or the time Horton crawled up 74 steps at the Capitol in Washington to pressure legislators to pass the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.

Horton and his wife, Kim, were later invited by President George Bush to attend the signing of the landmark bill, which requires most businesses and public buildings to accommodate the disabled by installing wheelchair ramps and wide doorways, issues for which Horton had fought long and hard.

“Through advocacy, I feel I can help people with disabilities believe in themselves,” Horton, 38, said. “Then they can accomplish whatever they want to.”

That’s why the Sylmar resident, who was born with cerebral palsy, is in Sacramento this week attending the Supported Life ’98 conference, where he will attend seminars including “Legislative Advocacy: Learning How to Lobby.”

Horton could write the book on that one.

While living with 141 residents at the United Cerebral Palsy Spastic Children’s Foundation facility in Sylmar 16 years ago, he met Terry Wetzel, a Los Angeles Unified School District teacher who brought an adult-school program to the site.

Wetzel and Horton organized a student body council to address changes the residents sought at the facility. The success of those meetings led to creation of a local chapter of the California Assn. for the Physically Handicapped in 1983; Horton was elected its first president.

Fifteen years later--and president once again of the self-advocacy group now called Californians for Disabilities Rights--the Los Angeles native not only has fought for wheelchair accessibility and other rights for the disabled, but organizes fund-raisers and community outreach programs.

“As an advocate for individual rights, Randy has fought hard to help people with disabilities to fully participate in society,” Wetzel said. “He has a genuine feeling for what’s going on.”

In addition to attending classes at Valley College and volunteering at Wheels for Humanity in North Hollywood, Horton serves as president of Heavenly Free, an Easter Seals Adult Day Program group that helps the disabled become more self-sufficient.

Horton is a member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Metro Wheel committee, which monitors wheelchair accessibility and quality of service on the transit system. He and Kim Horton, whom he met at an Easter Seals camp in 1981 and married 11 years ago, are also members of MTA’s Access Advisory Committee.

“Randy has a lot of credibility in the community because he’s been on the front line,” Transit Access President Steve Jaffe said. “He doesn’t just want to make a point, he wants to solve the problems.”

“Randy is very resourceful,” said Horton’s Easter Seals life skills coach, Lincoln Osborn, who assists him in his daily activities. “He’s taught me to not ever give up on anything, that there’s nothing I can’t do if I try.”

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