HENDERSON — In June 2004, a former Xcel Energy lineman, Andrew Blood, was strapped to a 50-foot-tall, rotting telephone pole in unincorporated Adams County, dismantling it piece by piece. With one section of hardware left to lower down, the wooden pole began to snap a few inches below ground.
“I felt the clouds moving,” said Blood, now 34. “I looked back and realized that the 800-pound pole I was strapped to was falling over.”
With an inevitable crash seconds away, Blood swung his body around to avoid slicing himself over the railroad tracks below. He hit the ground, missing the steel rails by inches. Blood remembers feeling immediate numbness in the lower half of his body.
“I knew instantly, as soon as I hit the ground, that I was paralyzed,” Blood said. “It was like a light went out from my chest down.
Blood also broke his femur and tailbone, four vertebrae and his pelvic bone in two places.
After a 12- to 14-hour initial surgery, a total of 24 blood transfusions, three back surgeries, rehabilitation for six years, hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills, and an eight-year legal battle for financial reparation from Qwest Communications, Blood decided he wanted to do something to help other survivors of spinal-cord injuries.
“I always wanted to try and start something to help people like me,” Blood said. “I remember the first time I was able to drive again, right out of the hospital. It was the greatest feeling to have that piece of freedom back.”
Blood met his girlfriend Sara Garriques, 28, around 2006, and the two formed the idea of the Blood Brothers Foundation, a nonprofit funding source for vehicle modifications for spinal-cord injury survivors.
Blood Brothers launched in 2013 out of their home in Henderson.
The foundation, kick-started with money from Blood’s settlement, helps to fund the installation of things like hand controls, wheelchair lifts, special steering devices and ramps for applicants who have a spinal-cord injury.
“Depending on the level of injury, people need different things,” said Garriques, a business school graduate. “A lot of (paraplegics) get the training to be able to drive again while they’re in the hospital, but when they go home it’s up to them to figure out what they need and how to fund it. That’s where we kind of come in.”
Vehicle modifications for disabled people can range anywhere from $1,300 to $50,000, Blood said.
According to 2013 statistics from the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center at the University of Alabama, the average annual health care and living expenses for survivors of spinal-cord injuries is $70,575. For people living on disability, a modified car is often an unaffordable luxury.
Dr. Indira Lanig, the medical director at Northern Colorado Rehabilitation Hospital in Johnstown was Blood’s doctor after his accident 10 years ago, and she has been a spinal-cord specialist for more than 25 years. She also sits on the board of directors of Blood Brothers Foundation.
“I believe that transportation and mobility (for spinal-cord injury survivors) is a woefully underserved need,” Lanig said. “There’s Access-a-Ride and other transportation services, but that does not lend itself to the spontaneity of life — the sense of independence that any adult would desire.”
Garriques said Blood Brothers has already received a handful of applications since its website launched last month. Applications can come from anywhere in the country.
“Driving puts a smile back on your face after such a rough road,” Blood said. “I absolutely love to drive. It’s something that you can do to just get away, to be by yourself and be free, even if just for a couple hours.”
Megan Mitchell: 303-954-2650, or mmitchell@denverpost.com