Moose build wheelchair ramp for local teen

Someone stole the old ramp from the family’s front porch.

A Springfield teen with Cerebral Palsy got a surprise last weekend when members of the local Moose Lodge volunteered their time to build her a new wheelchair ramp after one was stolen from her family’s porch.

“They’re all motorcycle guys and they all want to be out there riding their bikes, but they’re giving up their weekend to do something for a little girl they don’t know. It’s kind of cool,” Tony Stultz said of the kindness the Good Samaritans showed his 16-year-old daughter.

The single father previously had an aluminum ramp for his daughter Desiree to get in and out of their North Belmont Avenue house, but it was stolen last summer.

“As heavy as it was, it was hard to move up and down the stairs all the time,” Stultz said. “I thought leaving it in place would be all right.”

Unable to replace the ramp, it became a painstaking ordeal to get his daughter inside when she got off the school bus each day, Stultz told WHIO-TV.

“I have to walk up the stairs, then I crawl,” Desiree Stultz said.

One day last week, Mike Powell was riding behind Desiree’s school bus and witnessed the difficult process of getting her inside with the ramp.

“There’s no reason no one should be walking up those steps with that type of disability,” Powell said.

He asked his employer Tri-State Forest Products to donate lumber, gathered donations from Muffler Shop Warehouse and others to cover the cost of the building permit, and recruited his friends from the Springfield Moose Riders to help build a new ramp.

“If someone needs some assistance and we’re able to, that’s what we’re there for… supposed to help out and try to make life a little bit easier,” Powell said.

City inspectors are expected to check the ramp this week, then it will get a coat of paint and be ready for use.

"I think they're nice," Desiree Stultz, an eigth grader at Schaefer Middle School said.

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