Doctors told Oz Sanchez he would never walk again after a terrible motorcycle accident. After a decade of depression and a suicide attempt, Sanchez can walk.
He can also fly.
Sanchez, a former U.S. Marine and five-time Paralympic Games gold medalist told a Disability Awareness Celebration audience to choose perseverance over adversity.
“I was my own worst enemy,” he said. “My early adult life all the way up until my accident was one of insecurity and low self-esteem.”
After being discharged Sanchez suffered the motorcycle accident that left him paralyzed. Doctors told him he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
Sanchez paused and moved a few feet where he grabbed a stick and stood up from his wheelchair.
“As it turns out, I can walk,” he revealed.
Physical therapy and determination took his mind out of a “dark place,” he said, and led to his Olympic triumphs.
Sanchez won a gold and bronze medal as a hand cyclist at the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing. He won two more Paralympic medals in Rio de Janerio. He went on to get a degree in business management with a minor in communications at SDSU.
“That was a huge, huge accomplishment because it was something I truly believed I couldn’t do,” he said about earning his degree. “As long as you believe you can’t do something, that will be so. We are the sum total of the thoughts in our head.”
ABLE Club secretary Guadalupe Arreaga told the gathering that disabled students are often unaware of the resources available to them to help find jobs.
“A lot of our students that do have disabilities, they want to get a job but they don’t know how to go about it,” she said. “We advocate for students with disabilities. A lot of students don’t know their rights as a student with a disability.”
Arreaga said inspiring guest speakers help students realize what they can accomplish.
ABLE Club Co-President, Karina Mendoza, said the college needs to continue advocating for students with disabilities.
She said one day she noticed a student in a wheelchair who needed help opening a restroom door. Three people had walked passed the student before Mendoza arrived to help.
“I feel like most people that can walk and do things don’t really pay attention to that,” she said. “That made me think that there’s other students here that might need help and they don’t get it because a lot of people don’t think about it.”
Mendoza appealed to college administration to update the college bathrooms by installing automatic doors, automatic hand dryers and adjusting the placement of soap dispensers.
She said she is currently working on carving curb cuts around campus after students with wheelchairs addressed the issue to her.
As a student with a learning disability, Mendoza said her goal is to show students with disabilities that they can achieve whatever they choose to do.
“It’s better to move forward than to hold yourself back,” she said. “You are going to have obstacles to go over, but if you can accomplish those, you can get so far.”