Counselor on Wheels Stays Busy at Camp

Falayla Franck settled herself into the squishy gym mat to wait for flying kindergartners to come hurtling through the air.

One by one, the children raced past Falayla’s wheelchair, bounded onto a springboard and sailed into the air. They tumbled onto the mat to greet their camp counselor, who laughed and sent them scurrying back to try again.

When she met Falayla at Sierra Canyon Day Camp in Chatsworth, Melanie Bloom, who is 5, said she wondered what had happened to her counselor. Liam George, 6, worried that being in a wheelchair was hard for Falayla. Christian Henn, 5, saw that she could swim with him in the pool and stretch with him in the gymnastics room.

“Usually when they see people in wheelchairs, they have casts,” said Falayla, 16, who was paralyzed from the waist down by a virus when she was 3. “They didn’t understand why I didn’t have a cast. I had to think of different ways to explain it. . . . I’d say I got sick when I was little and that my legs were broken, but not broken bone-wise. Broken sort of muscle-wise.”

But Falayla can do what counts, Melanie said. “She makes sand castles and plays hide-and-seek,” she said.

Falayla was a camper at Sierra Canyon for seven years. Then she was a counselor-in-training for two years, and this summer she is working as a junior counselor.

“She’s added so much to the camp because the children know her,” said Shosh Byron, the camp’s executive director. “She gives them rides on her wheelchair. Maybe they haven’t met somebody with a disability before, and they see it’s not scary.”

During the school year, Falayla is a student at Chaminade High School in West Hills. She recently got her driver’s license and spends a lot of time hanging out with friends or going to the mall.

Falayla grew up participating in a host of sports, including basketball, tennis, hockey, skiing and wheelchair racing. She wants to try water-skiing and plans to get certified in scuba diving. “I like to keep busy.”

Chasing after 15 small children all summer is one way to do it. The initial curiosity the campers have about her wheelchair quickly fades, Falayla said. “Then they move on to, ‘Can I ride in it?’ ”