Man Gets a Second Chance to Work After Losing Sight

FOX News
Thursday, October 25, 2007

Man Gets a Second Chance to Work After Losing Sight

By Tina Benitez

David Mills was the family breadwinner for many years until his diabetes took a 
toll on his sight.

In 2006, Mills lost his job as a truck driver following a botched surgery to 
save his right eye after a vitreous hemorrhage, a diabetic condition in which 
vessels grow in the retina area and cause the eye to bleed. In the end, the 
surgery left him blind in both eyes, unable to return back to work.

Luckily, there was Arise, a home-based working company, which gives people with 
disabilities an opportunity to earn a living, working from home as customer 
care representatives.

Arise supports the concept of "homeshoring," an outsourcing customer care 
program, which pairs representatives working from out of home-offices, 
particularly for individuals with disabilities like Mills, with companies in 
need of employees. In fact, the number of work-at-home individuals is expected 
to increase from the current figure of 47,000 to 224,000 by 2012, according to 
Datamonitor.

The program is one of many in the U.S., giving people the opportunity to enter 
the workforce if they are disabled. Currently, the poverty rate for people with 
disabilities is 28 percent and only 32 percent of Americans with disabilities, 
aged 18 to 64, are employed, according to the National Organization on 
Disability.

Chance encounter

Mills first heard about the home-based working program during his 
rehabilitation at the Foundation for Blind Children, which also helps visually 
impaired adults learn to adjust to this major life change.

There, he learned how to do all the basics again, including: laundry, getting 
dressed, general mobility and training in braille. He even got some computer 
training.

David said that at first he didn't know what he was going to do once he 
returned home. For months the couple struggled with his wife Wanda working and 
commuting up to an hour an a half each way and coming home to cook and take 
care of their four teenage children. If David needed to go to a doctor's 
appointment, they would have to pay for cab fare, and the cab service could 
sometimes take up to three hours each way.

Some potential jobs for David in Phoenix really didn't fit, like one that 
required a two-hour drive across town each day for $7 an hour, which was not 
financially feasible for the family. Mills could not drive anymore as well.

But David had training in computers and decided to enter the Arise program that 
he heard about during his rehabilitation. He quickly picked up his first 
client, Home Depot, as one of their customer care representatives.

"At first, I thought it was not viable," he said, "but as I moved into it, I 
was amazed. I was hooked. I was on the Web site reading some of the client 
lists and applied. I found out that even with a disability, I can work with 
clients. When people call, they don't know that I am working from home, and 
two, they don't know that I am disabled."

Today, his wife Wanda works alongside David at home as a customer care 
representative through Arise. The extra costs of transportation to her old job 
are gone, and she can now be home to cook and be a mom to their teenage kids, 
aged 19, 16, 15 and 13 and help her husband. They sometimes go back and forth 
between clients, particularly is he is working with a client who works with 
chat customer care. Wanda will read, and David will respond.

The couple each work 35 to 45 hours per week. David said that the flexibility 
of the hours really allows them to go to doctor's appointments and even go to 
church, something David couldn't do when he was driving trucks. Working for 
Arise has also helped Wanda, who is currently back in school getting her 
Master's in junior high school education and should graduate by next December.

"I used to tell people, short of getting cancer and ensured or impending death 
facing you, going blind is the next worse thing you can go through," said 
Wanda. "It's devastating for me in a lot of different areas. He lost his 
income, lost his job right away. I had to become the breadwinner in the family. 
I had to manage the health, along with the kids and everything else. When he 
got hired by Arise, it was a turning point for us. It was the light that we 
needed to see."

Wanda added, "We're not wealthy, just regular working people. It was a huge 
lifestyle change and set back for all of us, emotionally. When my daughters 
realized that David would never see guys they married or never see 
grandchildren, that's hard. There's so much to it. There was this window of 
time where we were like, 'what are we going to do?'

David, who is 45-years-old now, said that it is a still a major life 
adjustment, but he's still moving forward. "It affects everything you do," he 
said, " but I still have my ears, my mouth, my hands and my feet, every other 
ability that people have. I am very blessed."


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,305239,00.html
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