Bears surprise Highland Park's Cooper Roberts with dune buggy-like wheelchair

Eight-year-old Cooper Roberts loves the beach, but wheelchairs were not made for sand.

Well, not most of them. On Wednesday, Cooper, the boy left paralyzed from the waist down during the mass shooting July 4 in Highland Park, was given the dune buggy version of a wheelchair. It has huge, gray wheels.

A big grin brightened Cooper's face as the Chicago Bears, working with the organization Devices 4 the Disabled, presented the boy with his gift after a Bears practice Wednesday.

"Getting to the beach, getting down into the sand, it's impossible to do in his regular wheelchair," said a delighted Keely Roberts, the boy's mother, speaking to the Bears organization. "It's absolutely impossible. It's one of those things that, as a family, we would never have been able to help Cooper with without the use of a beach wheelchair."

• Full story at chicago.suntimes.com.