ATLANTA – Lisa Calkins wrote the letter in early January. She hoped to convince the Challenged Athletes Foundation to award her a grant that would allow her to replace her 10-year-old son Sam’s two prosthetic “walking legs” with running blades capable of helping him play the sports he loves at a much faster pace.
A registered nurse, she had adopted Sam from China when he was 4 1/2 years old. His right foot had been amputated when he was 2 due to a birth deformity. The Shriner’s Hospital in Greenville, S.C., amputated his left foot when he was 7.
The walking legs weren’t useless. Sam had adapted to them well enough to both pitch and play the outfield in the Ringgold Tigers youth league, where last summer he was named to the league’s all-star team: the Dirt Bags.
But there were limits to the walking legs and there were financial limits to Calkins’ paychecks when it came to purchasing a $30,000 pair of running blades.
So she wrote the CAF, a San Diego-based charity that’s awarded more than $93 million in grants over its 25 years of existence.