ARLINGTON — Each day Dana McCollum watched the couple carry the child, all 64 pounds of her, up and down the five steep and sometimes slippery steps leading from their house to the gravel driveway.
“Oh bless their hearts,” the Arlington school bus driver thought to herself. “There has got to be a better way.”
McCollum didn’t want to intrude, but she worried that 7-year-old Chevi Jefferson’s great-aunt and great-uncle would hurt their backs.
She built up her resolve to ask them: Could they use a ramp and could she help them get one?
Ed and Kathy Farrell understood the need and appreciated the gesture.
Sure, they said, they’d be obliged if McCollum could pull it off. They knew it would allow their spirited grand-niece to become that much more independent.
There was just one problem: McCollum didn’t know where to go.
She approached churches and Boy Scouts who explained they were ill-equipped for the job.
Then McCollum heard the tail end of a snippet on the radio about something called a Rampathon, in which businesses and volunteers donate supplies and labor to help people with limited mobility. She did some internet sleuthing and submitted an application on Chevi’s behalf to the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties.
On Saturday, a team of volunteers, including seasoned craftsman and children not much older than she is, descended on Chevi’s rural home. They worked in the drizzle, measuring and cutting boards, digging and filling holes. It was a swarm of calculations and whirring saws, lifting, fitting and drilling.
The visitors could see how McCollum had grown enamored with Chevi, a sweet and determined child who asks what she can do to help. McCollum is drawn to her sincerity and the innocence of an imagination that allows Chevi to dream of becoming the tooth fairy some day.
Chevi attends a mainstream classroom at Eagle Creek Elementary School, but boards a special education bus to go to and from campus. She is remarkably resourceful in getting from Point A to Point B, sometimes crawling, but often upright in leg braces, using a walker or tables, chairs and whatever else is handy and sturdy enough to support.
She uses a wheelchair much of the time. When she does walk, it is with is a labored gait. She politely asks for help up if her legs give way. With spina bifida and club feet, it is hard for her to raise her legs very high. She has little strength or sense of feel beneath her knees.
“Will my legs always be broken?” she once asked her great-aunt.
The reality is they will always be different from her peers, but much can be done to improve her ability to get around. That is why she and her great-aunt and great-uncle were so eager for Saturday’s work party.
As volunteers toiled, Chevi and her friend, Genevieve Prouty, painted flowers, hearts, butterflies and ladybugs on railings to the ramp.
When she wasn’t painting or sanding or feeding carrots and sugar cubes to Fire, the family’s horse, Chevi watched her ramp take shape. She sat in her wheelchair beneath a large umbrella she held in the cold.
“I’m excited,” she said, explaining that she has practiced on a ramp at school in the past.
Chevi likes to sing and dance and ride on the tractor with her uncle. She feeds the dogs, mops the floor and joins in the cooking.
“There is just nothing that holds her back,” Kathy Farrell said. “If she can get to it, she does it. She doesn’t turn down anything.”
“She wants to do everything,” Ed Farrell said.
Eric Wallace, a cabinet-maker for Bruce Matson Co., led a crew that was a mix of people he knew and those he did not. The supplies were donated by Arlington Hardware and Dunn Lumber.
“She is terrific,” Wallace said, nodding in Chevi’s direction. “This makes everyone happy.”
Similar projects were underway across the Puget Sound region over the weekend. Master Builders volunteer groups are making 37 ramps, the most in the 23 years they’ve been building them. During that time, they have created more than 370 ramps and received $1.7 million in in-kind donations.
McCollum, the bus driver, was there Saturday to celebrate Chevi’s joy.
Bus routes change from year to year. She doesn’t know if she’ll be picking up her precious passenger next fall.
In drier weather, McCollum looks forward to making handprints on the ramp deck with Chevi.
“I may not be your bus driver, but I will always be your friend,” she told her.
Kathy Farrell shed a few tears Saturday when Chevi looked triumphantly down from the top of the ramp and waved as everyone clapped. Minutes later, Farrell had to tell her to slow up when she zoomed down the ramp for the first time.
“It’s just such a godsend,” she said.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; stevick@heraldnet.com.
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