A Turning Point

NORTH HOLLYWOOD —  Each Saturday, she changed the tires on wheelchairs, rotated their brakes, even scrubbed their seats and shined their handles.

But Giselle Nguyen, 17, wanted to deliver the wheelchairs to people in Vietnam whose legs had been rendered useless by war, polio, childhood disease or simply from lack of medical attention.

Volunteering each week at Wheels for Humanity’s warehouse wasn’t enough. So the Taft High School senior recruited her sister, Miriam, 15, and mother, Diepchau, to join a Wheels for Humanity team last summer on a mission to distribute 150 wheelchairs to Vietnam’s neediest. The trip was especially meaningful because Giselle’s parents are Vietnamese refugees.

“It was a great feeling,” she says of seeing recipients in their wheelchairs for the first time. “I was really happy and excited that I could see and talk to the people and I could see the expressions on their faces.”

According to David Richard, executive director of the nonprofit Wheels for Humanity, the world’s indigent disabled cannot afford wheelchairs, which range from $300 to $5,000. As a result, many are forced to a life of near seclusion in back bedrooms, crawling or being carried by family members.

Since its founding in 1996, Richard estimates that the organization has given away 4,000 wheelchairs in about 26 countries.

Giselle, who lives in North Hills, was introduced to the organization after hearing Richard speak at her high school in Woodland Hills.

“I thought they were doing a good service for the world,” she says. “So I went there once and I just kept coming back. I’m just stuck with it now.”

Giselle and Miriam volunteer in the Wheels for Humanity warehouse nearly every Saturday, cataloging wheelchairs from San Diego, Arizona and Redondo Beach and scrubbing them up for such places as Mexico, Cuba, Ecuador, Russia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

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“I like to think about who owned this chair before,” she says. “And I like to wonder about who will get it now.”

Each of the hundreds of wheelchairs currently awaiting distribution in Wheels for Humanity’s warehouse speak a quiet history. Some are metallic blue, others are a cool shade of lime green. Some are Barbie pink. Some even have the embroidered names of previous owners.

“I like to make a really old wheelchair look like new for someone else,” says Giselle in her quiet but confident manner.

Giselle, who is president of Taft High’s Interact Club--a community-service group that works with the Rotary Club of Woodland Hills--also volunteers in other ways.

During the recent winter break, Giselle, Miriam and four classmates worked for two days assembling 150 baskets to brighten the holidays for needy families in Canoga Park. The baskets were filled with tortillas, canned food, soap, cheese, even stuffed Pikachus for Pokemon fans.

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When she’s not busy volunteering, she works two days a week at the VA Medical Center in North Hills as a lab assistant for a doctor conducting research on narcolepsy.

While school prevents Giselle from going to Vietnam with Wheels for Humanity this spring, she hopes to send care packages instead.

“It might be nice to send a little tube of lipstick,” she says, “for a little Vietnamese girl to play with, because they don’t have that in these kinds of countries.”

Giselle says she might continue working with the disabled after college--maybe even with Wheels for Humanity.

“My parents have known poverty and what a terrible thing it can be,” she says. “So, [I want to do] whatever I can do to help relieve the pain and the sadness and the disparity of so many people around the world.”

To contact Wheels for Humanity, call (818) 766-8000.

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