Freedom to move

Three-year-old Rachel Luca teetered a bit as she tried out her new tricycle.

When she completed one trip around the living room, her entire family applauded and jumped up and down.

Rachel, who has cerebral palsy, had not been able to ride a tricycle before. But this is no ordinary trike.

The pedals have been built up with blocks so Rachael can reach them, and straps hold her feet in place. A bucket seat fitted with straps ensures she won't fall off. A wider back axle gives greater stability.

Rachel's mother, Lesley Luca, said she feels confident the tricycle will help her daughter to walk, as well as give her the independence any 3-year-old wants.

"She's here going back and forth around the house," the Yorkville woman said. "It's thrilling to see her so excited."

It's the smiles they receive from children like Rachel that keep Naperville residents Connie and Gordon Hankins modifying tricycles so kids with disabilities can ride.

"It's helping children who need help. There's no other way they could ride a regular tricycle," Connie Hankins said. "It's a very rewarding thing to do. You see these children and the joy it brings them."

Connie Hankins got involved with the Therapy Oriented Tricycle, or TOT, program 10 years ago. She and her husband, a retired Lucent Technologies employee, had joined the West Suburban Pioneer Club of Telecom Pioneers, a social and service group for current and retired employees of the telecommunications industry.

Lou Wegerer, an older member of the group who started TOT some years before, needed help. Connie volunteered and soon Gordon was helping, too.

The Hankinses took over leadership of TOT four years ago, and this year Connie won a regional TelecomPioneer Partner Individual Excellence Award for her dedication to the project.

Wegerer, 84, now helps the Hankinses with the project he used to run.

"They're doing a marvelous job. They put on many miles a year delivering those tricycles," the Naperville man said. "They've increased the productivity, getting to more children, many of which are in the area."

When Wegerer started modifying trikes after he retired in 1984, he gave away three the first year. This year, the Hankinses expect more than 60 to go to children in northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin and northern Indiana. Some trikes even have been sent overseas.

The club buys the tricycles and the Hankinses order the special parts. The trikes with the adaptive parts cost about $175 apiece, Gordon Hankins said. Donations are accepted from recipients but not required.

"There are other (adapted) tricycles out there, but they're so expensive," Gordon said.

Word about the project has spread through the 15 hospitals, with which the Hankinses work, among physical therapists and from parent to parent. The Hankinses ask only that parents have a therapist write a recommendation before they agree to give a child a trike.

While it takes only about a half-hour to modify a tricycle, the time spent on paperwork and phone calls is substantial, the couple said.

The Hankinses deliver the tricycles or have the recipients come to their home so they can make any further modifications that may be necessary.

Connie Hankins said the trikes sometimes seem to have wonder-working powers. Children who hadn't walked learn to walk. A girl with a hand-operated trike was able to join a T-ball team and pedal around the bases.

"We get lots of neat little letters," she said.

The tricycles with hand pedals have been obtained from another Telecom Pioneers club that is discontinuing its trike program because the members have grown too old. Gordon Hankins estimated that the couple will have enough hand-operated trikes to last three or four years.

The Hankinses also put upright handles on some tricycles and have a stand that was created by Wegerer so that a trike can be operated as a stationary bike indoors.

Gordon remembered delivering a tricycle with a stand to a girl in a hospital who was hooked up to an IV for 12 hours.

"She didn't want to get off. She wanted to keep pedaling as she was having her IV," he said.

Volunteer work is not new to the Hankinses. Connie, a former surgical nurse at Edward Hospital in Naperville, has delivered meals to seniors, visited the elderly, driven those in need of transportation and worked with the Red Cross in South Korea when the couple lived there for three years.

Both Hankinses serve on the board of the West Suburban Pioneer Club, and Gordon coordinates the club's food drive. The couple also supports other club service projects such as collecting back-to-school supplies.

But the TOT project is special to the Hankinses, who have two adult daughters and two grandsons who have helped test the trikes over the years.

"I think it's giving back what God has given to me," Connie Hankins said. "I consider this a ministry, really. I believe that it is."

She hopes one year to bring together children who have received the tricycles to ride in Naperville's Labor Day Parade.

"That's my dream or vision to do that," she said.

For details on the TOT project, call the Hankinses at (630) 355-7211.