A Story of Hope: Colin Heffern

This is not someone famous but simply a guy that fate has let me meet. This fall I will be moving out to Colorado and living in one of the University apartments with my brother. The previous tenant was a guy by the the name of Colin. A quadriplegic himself, he was injured on campus and set up with pretty nice digs.



Colin is a senior at Colorado State University studying landscape architecture. In high school, he was an avid athlete partaking in golf, tennis, swimming, and soccer and excelling in all. During his freshman year at CSU, he was injured doing a belly flop into a pile of leaves and has been paralyzed below the shoulders ever since. In the spring of 2008, he had the opportunity to study abroad at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

(That blurb was from www.swimwithmike.org, a fundraiser that uses a swim event to raise millions for athletes who have suffered serious injury or illness)

Since he is a quadriplegic, the apartment is already adapted for wheelchair use, with a roll in shower, automatic front door, and other stuff (I'm not actually sure what else, I haven't been there in person yet). Colin has made the best of his situation, graduating this past spring in landscape design. He is going to attend grad school in California in the fall.

It is one thing to hear about someone overcoming adversity, but it is another to meet (or at least talk on the phone) to someone in a very similar situation who went on full steam with his college career and beyond. Maybe this is doable after all.