a gold medal slung around your neck at the paralympics got my first one back in two thousand and four i'm sixteen and i would say that's a pretty surreal experience something that i dreamt of the night before and of course the several years before training wise and then to finally have it happen was very cool and my mom was up in the stands she was crying the and the hair national anthem was was pretty epic and then the scene you're flying in the middle with two other flags second and third experience what it's like have a medal around your neck sure sure you had laid down the gauntlet pretty early in life from a very young age you had that you wanted to compete in the two thousand for one thing which would eventually be your first why did that motivation come from why did you have that inkling the other guy next to me who had two legs you know it was it was just think it was about keeping up you know my whole life i've always had doctors people tell me that i would never accomplish too much i would never walk i would never run on really languages around the prosthetics and yet anybody who you know what the difference is you know if you had your real knees and you're missing the foot it is significantly easier to kind of continue down the path with living with prosthetics insurance bought leg that was in my family can afford and they were actually legs geared towards your older patients your diabetic patients who were getting one leg amputated or already both of them so that  their ability of these legs were were not very good actually i remember that with my first year with prosthetics it was i'm going back to the doctor at least twice a week to get them fixed to get them something was was was loose something was broke something wasn't wasn't feeling right it was always something with the leg and and really that was kind of the the my first it was challenge was you know growing up with a with a physical disability going through fifteen surgeries to try to fix my real and then getting to the point where i was you know basically grew up in a hospital and i was kind of over the whole being in the hospital and you know i overhear the doctors talking about we might need to amputate on this for me it was like a black and white  so when when my parents were heard me talking about you know i was i was told my grandma was telling everybody that the doctors were going to cut my legs up you know it's obviously very emotional but i think it made it that much easier for my parents to go through the procedure and and i would say you know the recovery after i had my legs amputated was you know two three months out a lot of stitches and heal well i was ready to go i wanted to move and i remember the doctor sent me home after a few weeks in the hospital i said be home with these cast around my leg similar to when you break your arm or a leg and doctors they told me to not walk on these because your legs are still healing in stitches and i remember soon as i got home i lived in a trailer trailer and says  got home i was running up and down the trailer i had to go back a week later because i made a hole and in the in the little cast and because i was just on and it was for me it felt like i was running on my knees and so i felt like i was free  i was loose i was going and then of few weeks later i finally got my first for a prosthetic leg what i remember most when i got my first pair prosthetics was being able to stand up and then kind of look at people in the same eye level and  and that was kind of like that was his like way of telling me like me to slow down because you may get a little too it's all to the point where you fall you know it's all right down way down and then i remember going home with my new legs and being able to see what was like on top of the kitchen counter for me because i was able to take my legs off you know these legs that were you know ten pounds there were on my legs with belts and they were very comfortable they were very heavy and broke a lot and for me when i jumped in the pool it was like my freedom i can  and i really didn't like that title i didn't sit well with me because i thought to myself i'm a lot more than just a boy with no legs you know i i thought that kind of got that little fire in me and i made my first goal my first goal i'm ever tell my parents i just want to age you know being doubt and looked down upon a chip on the shoulder is thought of as a bit then i'm going to you i'm thinking maybe it's not such a bad thing not so bad in the right situation it kind of is it is fuel for the fire and i be the first person you have to have a gold medal around your neck and think you're a winner i think made a winner is is a little different for everybody for me being a winner when i first started something was beating the kid next to me it wasn't about becoming number one it wasn't about winning races overall but it was more about just being the guy next to me you know i was in one races and running races coming in dead last i was that guy i remember i used to go to one m me what winning is i would say it's about building up the next generation of young kids who are in the same situation as you who are experiencing the things that you went through and being able to be that role model and that guy says you know what look at i did what i did all this so you can do all the if not more or or whatever you want to do with it's possible you are now working at selwyn durrance here in new york city you know you're originally from california you're also working now with your road runner and developing their wheelchair training program which is geared toward anybody who cares or the children specifically we are targeting the youth new york road runners has a program the rising new york road runners which isn't a lot of the public schools around the york city we want to aspire to running and and so we want to get to the kids and young we want to let them know that they need to be moving they need to you know running can translate into almost all the sports you know so we always want to be kids moving we want to get them active and we believe that all kids should be active so we have some kids who are physically challenged they should have the same opportunity as any other king the other kid in the school and so we have each wheelchair training program we have three ten week programs where we meet every saturday and  runners we supply all the wheelchairs we have about twenty twenty push wheelchairs for racing and then we supply the helmets and the equipment needed so really we get these kids out and we show them that just because you're in a wheelchair you can't you can't run you know we have these push chairs and these guys are out there every weekend and really you know we're really building up their self confidence and we're building building up their their lives because you know through sport we believe that that kind of kind of how  a good way to get back into the game of life or to get into the game of life you really builds that confidence and especially the young kids who are looked at as different you know they are different their whole lives and they know that you know these kids are very smart bills that program and they go out and find more kids who who will benefit from from the opportunity of getting involved in sport so for an able bodied person looking at say one of these kids how do you suggest they do because i think with the best of intentions they want to go in and like help the kid out you know try to but like you said the kid sees that he's being treated differently for you know is there what do you suggest people do to not have that happen it's a tricky very tricky balance and a lot of times people will feel like they cannot say certain things to physically challenged kids because they just feel awkward about it and i think that's something that you know if you said it's tricky but for me i have i feel like i have a special way that i can talk to these kids because i've been there and i've done that so i know exactly how they're feeling and what they're thinking for anybody else that's really again it's hard i know it feels like where it just like being on the bat but it's you have to treat these kids like everybody else and that means you cannot you cannot be soft on them yet to be going to be tough on them because that's really what they need they need to be able to find that independence and when they find independence through sport that carries on through their everyday life and you know mom and dad are not going to be there the whole lives to push them around so when we get them out on the track and in their chairs we treat them like i have as if we have a normal age group track team you know they they're they're out there they're pushing to get in there entirely or pushing them even more by other family you know which is again another challenging aspect in a lot of these families they don't have the means to do to afford these high end prosthetics or these high end chairs and i think that's why it's so important for organizations like new for kids with disabilities the problem is much more worse for kids with physical disabilities if you look at the statistics i don't know the exact numbers but i do know your whole disabled community and united states of the that community it's maybe it less than five percent who are physically active and do they adapt to it really well do they respond to it or is it take a little bit like when when your child you love it and they adapt it right away because that they know that that's a way for them to have their freedom and they a lot of these kids just want to feel the air going against their in the wing going to get their face in the feel that sweat and the feel that that feeling of like they just pushed all day in their arms or kind that's what these kids want it's one of the three now when you have a physically challenged athlete who is and fresh and just recently you know was in an accident it's become very challenging because the first thing they need to do is learn how to use prosthetics and then being able to use and get the high in the adaptive prosthetics is like a whole other level so pushing physical activity and pushing that this physical activity for challenge athletes is very important because it's a way of life sure you do a lot of talks you give a lot of motivational speeches to schools and businesses around do you find there's a difference in motivating kids vers adults and maybe kids with disabilities worse adult disabilities is there a big difference between the two i love talking with with elementary kids  because a lot of these kids they're just so inquisitive they're so curious why i have these prosthetics and you know a lot of times when i'm around new york city i wear shorts and probably the only guy who wear shorts in new york city in the wintertime which you know my little so it's not too shabby but really i see i see a lot of the kids around new york city or wherever on that was staring at my legs and a lot of times more nothing that parents will say don't stand and then try to get the kids attention to something else because they don't want to experience that awkward moment when the kid says mommy it's a robot and i happened to hear it or something like that they don't to go through that because i important then trying to educate an adult but we as a movement of the physically physically challenged athletes you know the paralympics is is a movement to challenge at least foundation is a movement we've only were around for twenty five years i'm not saying that before the child athletes foundation there wasn't data sport and sports for and that is athletes but you know since the challenge athletes came around it's really it's changed the way we perceive challenge athletes and you know the biggest example is i mean nowadays we have young three four five year old kids who are running around on these on these running legs and they have no idea what it's like to to run w and they're going to continue on and they're going to break any war records are going to win all the gold medals that and it's amazing to say that you know we we kind of started that movement and it's a fresh it's a new movement but it's really educating the kids killed another twenty five years everybody's going to know what what these are and there's going to be no questions on on whether that person with one or two prosthetics can you know ironman or can whatever they want to do it is just a challenge i always i always say to people that the real disability is a negative attitude that we all have that we all have a choice in the morning we wake up we put our shoes on go out the door go to work so when i put my legs on do i go out and go to work you know it we all have those same choices some of these choices might be a you know challenging more challenging for you or more challenging for me so it's really a matter of perspective but at the end of the day we all have our same challenges and it's really about the way we perceive things and it's all happened here and the mind is you know sure why did you feel the need to give back to get involved with john jaffe foundation why did you feel the need i mean you're a pretty high profile athlete you could have just lead by example you could have just been the guy doing the why and everything else you've done you know a gold medal in the paralympics and just lead that way why did you have to physically get involved with john japie foundation to really do some grassroots work with a lot of these  it i just i didn't like it i i just wanted to really be normal in every every every way even though it was absolutely impossible once someone becomes physically challenged they need to embrace that otherwise you will have a lot of damon kind of around that and i had a few demons when i was younger when i was going to high school i wanted to be normal i wanted to look normal i wanted to be like my classmates really wasn't until i was twenty two twenty three years old that i finally understood that this is this is bigger than me and i cannot i cannot then ascend sacrifice my you know my my my own wants for what potentially can can can happen with with some people have been crying just completely bawling said it because they see me they decided to change their life or whatever the situation is and as a young kid you can't really process that you think that they're just trying to make you feel good and really when you get a little bit older you start to understand that you know maybe all the thousands of people who said that need something and maybe maybe this is you know this is this is this is a this is this is something that you know the world potentially needs i find myself humble by it because you know something that i hadn't asked was something has been put put on me and as i said when i was younger i didn't appreciate even now not the point where i fully understand it and i can i understand it there's people who who need just need to see me out there racing these people who need th guys there we need we need to really push them out there because you know when when the world sees someone like myself or like one of my teammates they're a little problems a lot of times disappear and kind of push things in perspective so i think now i love being in the role that i'm in with the challenge at least foundation with new york road runners doing work with the keeley's because the community and building up the education and outreach is very important and you know it's just you know we're all playing our little role in something big i think so yeah i think you're absolutely right about that is all about purpose and what you've clearly found yours i found my passion that's right there it's right in working with challenge a powerful weapon came together for team braveheart we did that race in san diego and the whole you understanding go travel and challenge and we continue to do that race ten years in a row so robin williams would come back every year and he would always put it on his calendar to be in san diego with the challenge athletes foundation and i was that lucky kid that he was part of a team with and you know just deceased so you guys understand i mean when i was young rob williams was in all my favorite movies and i mean mrs doubtfire lover demining i mean all these movies robin was the man and it was different and something i never experienced see this guy on the movies and then going to these races in being able to have like a conversation that we're having and you would think that a lot of the questions there were a lot of think the things that he would ask me where about my legs or about the sports that i do or i'll be asking him about the movies or certain scenes were really from there we developed this really cool relationship where i would see him every year and it was a lot of respect i think for rob and it was something that he really needed to be around challenge athletes you know i think it gave him a different perspective on life it kind of you know kind of changed changed its home a little bit for him and i think that he needed dad why he had his his challenges as well so you know maybe we couldn't see these challenges but they were there and when he was around us a challenge athletes know we are challenges in our slave and so it was something for him it just felt good to him and you know over the years we through our relationship you know i remember when i was young when i was ten eleven years old robin would actually send me boxes of video games i think robin sent me my first playstation one i was the coolest kid on the block and i had all the other coolest games and i still stay in touch with his family very good friends with his son cody who is round my age