Seizing the day

Young man undaunted by developmental disabilities

By Pam Mellskog
2009 Longmont Times-Call

LONGMONT — Though blue jean-clad and just 20 years old, Kyle Sanchez talks and acts like a gentleman.

He criticizes rap music for lyrics that “disrespect women” and holds his mother’s hand in public if she — a 42-year-old widow disabled by multiple sclerosis — becomes unsteady on her feet.

Sanchez — who lives with her and his younger brother, Andrew — got a job last year to help pay the family’s bills. But his helpful attitude earned him more than a paycheck.

Sanchez received the Governor’s Summer Job Hunt Award from 400 nominees statewide in August. In March, he became the 2009 Direct Support Professional of the Year in Colorado — recognition bestowed by the Virginia-based American Network of Community Options and Resources, a nonprofit, national trade association.

The kudos means more given his once-desperate survivor status as a baby born 16 weeks early on May 18, 1988.

His family waited two months to touch him. Eventually, they dressed him in Cabbage Patch Doll clothing and made tiny diapers with gauze.

Dolores Sanchez, Kyle Sanchez’s maternal grandmother, put down her knitting and held up her hand to describe the situation.

“He fit in the palm of my hand. ... And there wasn’t a part of his body that wasn’t attached to something,” she said, referring to the ventilator, monitor wires, intravenous lines and feeding tube. “I didn’t know how God was going to work this miracle, because I didn’t see it happening.”

The Children’s Hospital in Denver, where Kyle Sanchez lived until age 7 months, gave him a 20 percent chance of survival and a 10 percent chance of survival without serious disability.

No one except his mother, Maria Sanchez-Trujillo, expected him to live, much less to walk or talk.

Kyle Sanchez survived and then got help from age 3 on at the Lafayette-based Imagine! center for people with developmental disabilities. In 2007, he graduated from Skyline High School in Longmont.

“But he said it had always been his dream to work,” said Heather Hine, his supervisor in Imagine!’s Out and About program.

She hired him last May to work full time last summer as an assistant in this recreation therapy program for Imagine! clients. Participants include people ages 7 to 21 living with developmental disabilities such as autism, cerebral palsy and Down syndrome.

Kyle Sanchez now works part time in Out and About’s after-school program.

Hine remembers him arriving for the interview wearing pressed slacks, a dress shirt and a tie. After he interviewed well, she offered him the job.

“You should have seen his face. It was one of shock and just sheer joy,” she said. “He kept saying ‘Thank you,’ and ‘I’m going to work so hard.’”

Kristen Erby, a career counselor with Workforce Boulder County in Longmont, applauded him for landing a competitive job.

“Nobody with disabilities wants to be put (to work) in the back of a warehouse,” she said. “He’s compassionate and a great role model to the camp participants because he’s overcome his own barriers to employment.”

For instance, Kyle Sanchez struggles to understand time. To get to work or to his desk at Life Strategies University — the St. Vrain Valley School District’s two-year life skills program in Longmont — he stands by the family’s mailbox and waits until his cell phone’s digital clock reads 7:59 a.m.

Then, he knows to head for the bus — a service with time-sensitive schedules he worked for years to understand.

His prematurity also affected his fine motor skills. Tying shoes and opening potato chip bags remain a challenge.

But Kyle Sanchez can do nothing more than take medication for the worst consequence of his early birth — a weak heart. His ticker may fail to give him the years he wants to work, start a family and enjoy his surprising life.

“The attitude for me would be, ‘Keep on goin’ ’til you can’t no more,’” he said.

Pam Mellskog can be reached at 303-684-5224 or pmellskog@times-call.com.