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Monday, July 01, 2002

By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

All Manuel Cardenas wanted to do was help a friend. He was serving in the special forces of the Equadoran army in 1986 when a parachute accident lefta friend paralyzed. Cardenas decided to make sure his friend had a wheelchair.

	Manuel Cardenas and wife Sheila Burick at their New Castle home. (Matt Freed, Post-Gazette)

Which turned out to be a giant challenge.

Cardenas couldn't find one anywhere. He went to the Red Cross in Equador, where a worker told him, "We don't know when we'll get another one. We won't know until someone else dies."

And he noted, to his surprise, that the office for people with disabilities was located on the third floor of a building without an elevator.

Finally, after six months, Cardenas located a chair through the Red Cross office in Colombia.

"I realized that my country had nothing," he said. "I never was aware before. I had no idea."

Energized and horrified by the experience, Cardenas has devoted the past 15 years to increasing opportunities for disabled people in developing countries, primarily in Latin America. He is president of Momentum International, a company with the motto, "Maximizing abilities, minimizing disabilities and changing attitudes through sport."

Now living in New Castle with his wife, Dr. Sheila Burick, and their three children, Cardenas, through his company, is sponsoring a 5-kilometer race in New Castle to benefit local people with disabilities and a non-profit wheelchair factory the company built in Quito, Ecuador.

The Momentum International 5K, July 13 at Pearson Park, will feature a 5K wheelchair race, a 5K run/walk and two children's races, a .2-mile division for children ages 7 and under, and a half-mile division for children ages 8 to 10.

Wheelchair athletes from eight countries in Latin America -- Ecuador, Costa Rica, Honduras, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua and Guatemala -- will participate. Cardenas also expects Antonio Nogueira, a veteran of the UPMC Health System/City of Pittsburgh Marathon, who is from Portugal, to compete, along with two Kenyans who might arrive by bus from Atlanta.

The organizers stressed that the race and walk are open to anyone, including people without wheelchairs designed for sports or people in wheelchairs who would like to have someone push them.

"My goal is to develop this race in Western Pennsylvania as the premier 5K wheelchair race," Cardenas said.

The course is flat and has only four turns.

Through his injured friend, Cardenas became interested in wheelchair athletics -- and how those athletes could improve conditions for larger numbers of disabled people in poor countries. He put together a two-person Equadoran team for the 1992 Paralympics in Barcelona, Spain, and then won a fellowship to study at the University of Illinois, which has one of the world's top sports programs for the disabled.

At about the same time, he met Burdick, a pediatrician and internist who was doing a medical mission in Equador. Before long, they were married, and Burdick joined her husband in working with the disabled. "Our mission," she called it.

They moved to Atlanta to be involved with the 1996 Paralympic Games. They found that the profile of the world's most important event for disabled athletes was low: "The community was hosting the Olympics, but no one knew about the Paralympics," Burick said. So they opened a kiosk in a local mall for Momentum International merchandise.

They did more than sell T-shirts and other merchandise, however. They tried to educate the public about disabled athletes, through traditional programs and activities such as a fashion show featuring people in wheelchairs.

For a while, the organization collected donated wheelchairs from the United States and other developed countries and took them to Ecuador. Shortly, however, they realized it was more cost effective to build the wheelchairs in the country.

Using grants from the United Nations, Momentum International built a wheelchair factory in Quito, Ecuador. The not-for-profit factory, which opened in 1996, employs local workers, and it provides wheelchairs for people who, mostly, make monthly payments.

Cardenas said that a census 10 years ago showed that about 2 million of 12 million Equadorans have disabilities. About 50,000 of those disabled people, he added, have no wheelchairs.

Cardenas visits Equador several times a year, visiting his family and checking on the factory. When his wife accompanies him, she often holds seminars to educate caretakers of the disabled -- how to treat bedsores, for instance, a common problem among people who spend much of their lives in one position.

His organization also lobbies for better access for disabled people -- more ramps, more elevators. And it has held two wheelchair celebrations, coinciding with United Nations disability days, in Latin America.

In addition to clinics for wheelchair athletes, especially beginning ones, and competition for wheelchair teams, the celebrations raise awareness.

Cardenas also took Equadoran Olympic teams to the Atlanta and Sydney Games.

One member of the 2000 team was a young woman, Nancy, who had spent 20 years of her life inside her home -- she didn't have any means of transportation, and her family didn't know what to do with her, anyway.

Said Cardenas, "It was like they had a monster in the house."

Momentum International donated a wheelchair in 1997, and Nancy's life changed. She left the house, gained confidence in herself and eventually finished first in Equador's Paralympic qualifying race. Her time wasn't fast enough to qualify, but she received a wild card to the Paralympic Games, and three years after she left the house, she went to Sydney.

"Every time someone goes, they get inspired," Cardenas said. "Now she has gone home, and she has 10 or 15 students training with her. The opportunities are increasing."

For registration information call, 724-657-3007, or send e-mail to momentum@ccia.com.

Correction/Clarification: (Published July 3, 2002) In a story Monday, we botched the names of the New Castle couple who are the organizers of the 5-kilometer wheelchair race scheduled in that city July 13. They are Manuel Cardenas and his wife, Dr. Sheila Burick.