Cabrillo College Stroke & Acquired Disability Center • Who Makes It Work? • Volunteers

Robert McGaw has utilized his life experience to serve and inspire others living with disabilities. Bob was a typical physically active boy until the age of twelve when he contracted polio. Two years in an iron lung, followed by Bob McGaw at his computer. home schooling through high school, did not stop him from applying to Ventura Junior College in 1960. He was initially turned down because there were no provisions for students with disabilities. After a six-month battle with the college, he was allowed to enroll as the first disabled student to attend that institution. Taking notes with a pen attached to a mouth stick and negotiating with fellow students and teachers to get pushed and lifted to classes in inaccessible buildings, he completed his AA degree. He followed this feat by going on to earn a BA in mathematics at the University of California.

After working for two decades in private industry, Bob’s health began to fail as post-polio syndrome set in. He moved to a residential facility where he receives assistance with eating, dressing, bathing and most other activities of daily living.

Instead of retiring from life, Bob came to the Cabrillo College Stroke and Acquired Disability Center, first as a student, receiving rehabilitation services, and for the past two decades, as a volunteer, sharing his indomitable spirit with others. Bob spends every weekday updating, maintaining, and printing student schedules and attendance information at his Macintosh workstation. Being quadriplegic, his only access to the computer is through his keen intelligence, his sense of humor and his right foot and a mouth stick. He is directly responsible for the daily scheduling of 80-100 students in as many as sixty different classes. All of this complex work is performed using a plastic mouth stick for the keyboard and a “foot-mouse” specially rigged for Bob by another Stroke Center volunteer.

Bob is personally and directly responsible for improving the experience of the Stroke Center’s students, all of whom are severely disabled. He saves the Center’s staff hundreds of hours and thousand of dollars, but more importantly, he inspires everyone whose life he touches.

To thank him for his tireless volunteer efforts, the Center staff raised $5000.00 to help Bob fulfill a dream to visit the Newpaper article on Bob McGaw's trip to Washington DC Smithsonian Institution. He cannot fly, so the cross-country trip was arranged on AMTRAK. Bob was accompanied by a personal aide. He toured the Smithsonian, met our Congress Members in the House and Senate, and toured the (somewhat inaccessible) White House. On his way home, his attended his first major league baseball game!

Besides his work at the Stroke Center, Bob serves as an appointee on the Santa Cruz County Commission on Disabilities. His early experience living in a world not guided by the American With Disabilities Act, makes his work for the Commission invaluable to others living with similar challenges. As a Commissioner, Bob has been instrumental in improving the quality of life in our community by, gently but firmly, insisting that local government agencies provide wheelchair access to public buildings, curb cuts on sidewalks, training in the use of public transportation, public awareness campaigns, and the development of emergency procedures for those with disabilities.

Bob McGaw is an outstanding example of an individual who has made the choice not to let illness and disability lead to confinement and dependence, but instead to view his physical limitations as a challenge. He has discovered ways to serve the community creatively and productively; bringing meaning to his own life and inspiring the lives of others. Bob is an inspiration to all who know him. His daily presence is an unvarying example of a life lived well.