[nfbwatlk] FW: [Wcb-l] mark in the news, lol.

Thu Aug 13 19:32:31 UTC 2009

Hi,
I heard it on KOMO radio!  LOL.

Years ago a friend of mine dropped her cane down the elevator shaft at the 
state capitol bldg and someone retrieved it for her.  But she wasn't in the 
news!  They must have been really short on news this morning.  LOL.
Thanks
Lauren
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Sivill" <mike.sivill at viewplus.com>
To: "'NFB of Washington Talk Mailing List'" <nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2009 8:36 AM
Subject: Re: [nfbwatlk] FW: [Wcb-l] mark in the news, lol.

> Reminds me of all those canes lost down elevator shafts at conventions.
> Mike
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Frye, Dan
> Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2009 8:18 AM
> To: NFB of Washington Talk Mailing List
> Subject: [nfbwatlk] FW: [Wcb-l] mark in the news, lol.
>
> This, in the forwarded message below, is the most ridiculous use of city
> time and effort that I've ever heard of in a long while. I'm glad things
> worked out for Mark, of course, but in an age where we're dealing with
> all kinds of social and economic issues, what is the government doing
> retrieving lost items (the product of an incidental accident that could
> have happened to anyone) and why is the press covering this nonsense?
> And while I am fairly attached to my cane, I hardly think of it as being
> such a custom fit that its loss would be consequential. To Mark's
> credit, he wasn't expecting that the cane would be recovered or that
> this would attract conventional press attention, but our friend
> certainly does manage to get covered in the press for the most amazing
> reasons.
>
> Exasperated,
>
> ***********************
> Daniel B. Frye, J.D.
> Associate Editor
> The Braille Monitor
> National Federation of the Blind
> Office of the President
> 1800 Johnson Street
> Baltimore, Maryland 21230
> Telephone: (410) 659-9314 Ext. 2208
> Mobile: (410) 241-7006
> Fax: (410) 685-5653
> Email: DFrye at nfb.org
> Web Address: www.nfb.org
> "Voice of the Nation's Blind"
> The Braille literacy crisis in America jeopardizes opportunities for
> blind people throughout the country.
> You can be part of the solution.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wcb-l-bounces at wcbinfo.org [mailto:wcb-l-bounces at wcbinfo.org] On
> Behalf Of Becky Frankeberger
> Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2009 10:47 AM
> To: Wcb-l at wcbinfo.org
> Subject: [Wcb-l] mark in the news, lol.
>
> Hey Mark, to help you feel better I tapped apparently hard a fire
> hydrant coming out of class at the University of Pittsburgh.  My friend
> was driving me home, anyway. This was my only cane. Glue did not help
> keep the tip on.
> So I was stuck for a couple of weeks as I was a new cane user and had no
> idea where to get a new one.  Being a teen I was too embarrassed to ask
> my VR counselor.
>
> Becky and my joy wheels
>
> Blind man gets cane back after it slipped down drain A blind man who
> lost his cane down a storm-sewer drain last month in West Seattle got it
> back this week, with help from a watchful friend and Seattle Public
> Utilities.
> By
> Susan Gilmore
> Seattle Times staff reporter
> Mark Adreon, who is blind, stands next to the West Seattle drain where
> his white cane got caught and fell in.
> Enlarge this photo
> GREG GILBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES
> Mark Adreon, who is blind, stands next to the West Seattle drain where
> his white cane got caught and fell in.
> One minute Mark Adreon, who has depended on his cane to get around since
> he went blind 16 years ago, was walking along an unfamiliar West Seattle
> street and, in a split second, his cane was gone.
> It was sucked into a storm-sewer drain, and, Adreon figured, was lost
> forever.
> Adreon was walking with a friend to a festival in West Seattle last
> month "when my cane hit something and I started tapping and it just
> dropped down the drain."
> He figured it had dropped 25 feet into a sewer catch basin.
> Believing the cane was gone and sad that he'd lost the one that worked
> so well for him, he had to order a new one.
> Enter David Gould.
> Gould, who lives in the same condo building as Adreon and is a friend,
> said he was sitting at his computer above the street and saw Adreon's
> cane drop into the catch basin below the grate.
> Like Adreon, Gould thought the cane was lost. But on Tuesday, when Gould
> passed the storm sewer and looked through the grate, the cane was still
> visible.
> Maybe, he thought, Seattle Public Utilities could help.
> Within hours, Adreon had his cane back, retrieved and cleaned by two
> city workers.
> "I was surprised and grateful. I certainly didn't expect it," said
> Adreon, 50, who works for a state agency for the blind. "What happened
> yesterday was so serendipitous.
> I'm blind and you get used to a certain piece of equipment. I never
> imagined [the city] would take the time or energy to rescue a cane."
> Using a computer that can locate any sewer grate in the city, city
> workers found the one that had swallowed the cane and sent a crew of two
> to fetch it.
> advertising
> Click here to find out more!
> \
> Andy Ryan, spokesman for Seattle Public Utilities, said calls for items
> lost down sewer drains are rare, only two or three each month, but this
> is the first time he's heard of a cane disappearing down a sewer.
> Other items that have been lost: cellphones, tools, eyeglasses, money
> and jewelry.
> If the city has the crew available, it will try to retrieve the items.
> Crews have rescued kittens and ducklings from drains, he said, and once
> there was a call to help a penguin from Woodland Park Zoo that had
> fallen into a drain. It didn't survive.
> Another time, a utility worker found an entire bag of groceries in a
> storm drain, including hot dogs and a whole chicken.
> "We do it routinely," Ryan said of retrieving lost items in drains.
> "It's one of the things the crews do. If we're able to help the
> customer, we will."
> Ryan said the catch basins below the drains are cleaned each year, so
> the cane eventually would have been pulled from the drain, but the city
> would have had no idea who it belonged to if Gould had not made his
> call.
> "We were all pleased the city jumped on it so fast," Gould said. "The
> cane is like the extra finger on a hand."
> Ironically, Adreon was walking near the grate at the same time the city
> workers pulled out his cane and reunited him with it.
> As for Adreon, he now has a spare should a sewer grate swallow his cane
> again.
> Susan Gilmore:                20...        or
> sgilmore at seattletimes.com
> Copyright C The Seattle Times Company
>
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