Tina Verduzco

Hi, I am Tina Verduzco. I was born January 13, 1972 in Colima, Colima, Mexico. I am the eighth of nine children born to Primitivo and Celia Verduzco. From my very youngest age I have been outgoing and gregarious.

April 16, 1976, while returning from a family outing feeding cattle, two of my cousins and I were riding on a horse. We were beside a railroad track. A passing train frightened the horse causing it to throw us. My cousins were pitched away from the train, but I went under the wheels. In an instant my entire life was transformed.

My father was on a horse at the end of the line. When he saw what had happened to me, he assumed that I was dead. He was ready to kill the engineer when I spoke up and said, "Papi, I fell." He grabbed me up and ran to town. My legs were in shreds. Infections kept forcing revisions. When the infections were finally controlled, I was left with two extremely short stumps.

My hospital stay was about four months. During that time, I was showered with attention and given full rein to be cute. And so I was. Upon being released I was lots shorter than I had been a few months earlier, but I was still just as outgoing, gregarious, and now a well-practiced cutie.

Our financial situation did not allow me to have a wheelchair, so for my first year without legs, I got around like a monkey, walking on my hands.

When I was five, my father's cousin, Sofia Verduzco offered to bring me to San Francisco, California where she worked. She got me into Shriner's Hospital For Crippled Children and I was fitted for artificial legs. I gave it a really good try, but by age eleven I knew that artificial legs on stumps as short as mine were always going to be restricting. I made my choice to forego limbs in favor of a flashy wheelchair.

This is not a choice that everyone in my situation can make. Often the desire to look "normal" forces choices that work against mobility and freedom. I am agile. I am nimble. I go everywhere and do everything.