Ten years ago, St. Mary of the Woods parishioners Bob Shea and the late Ed Kane were just getting Devices 4 the Disabled off the ground, picking up mobility devices like wheelchairs and walkers from families who no longer needed them and storing them in the basement of St. Philip Neri Church before lending them out to others who needed them.

Now the nonprofit has a warehouse, distribution center and paid staff, as well as relationships with several safety-net hospitals. It distributes about 3,000 devices a year.

“Nine years ago, it was all just word of mouth,” Shea said. “Now we work with the safety net hospitals — Stroger, Cook County Health, Mount Sinai Hospital. Their workers and therapists can refer people to us. We still work through organizations and churches too.”

About 80% of clients now come from referrals, and they work with staff, including executive director Jessica Corbus, a physical therapist who worked in physical therapy programs at Kankakee Community College and Governor’s State University, to make sure that the equipment is appropriate for the client.

But the organization’s roots go back to the experiences Shea and Kane both had of becoming disabled in the prime of their lives. Shea contracted Guillaine-Barre syndrome and was paralyzed for seven months in four hospitals. In 2011, while Shea was in recovery, his friend was diagnosed with ALS.

Both of them discovered how difficult and expensive it could be to get what they needed to navigate their worlds.

For example, Kane’s doctor prescribed a complex wheelchair for him. The chair cost $30,000; Kane’s insurance would pay $2,500, Shea said.

Kane, who died in 2016, was able to use retirement savings to pay for his chair, but for most people, that’s not an option.

“Our experience taught us how important this equipment is,” said Shea, who was once told he would never walk again but now walks with leg braces. “It gives you your life back.”

Shea and Kane began looking around to see what options were available to people who couldn’t afford what they needed.

“In the city of Chicago, where there’s over 500,000 people disabled in one way or another, we could only find one little lending locker in the basement of St. Gertrude Church,” Shea said.

At the same time, most of the agencies that serve needy or disabled people don’t accept donations of used durable medical equipment, he said. So Shea and Kane decided to fill that gap.

Shea said the organization’s connections with safety net hospitals and clinics have led to them helping many people left disabled by gun violence.

“We see a lot of difficult cases,” he said. He recalled a family in which the 19-year-old daughter was sitting on the front porch and was shot, although she was not the intended target. She was left a quadriplegic and on a ventilator, and without the necessary equipment, her mother would not be able to care for her at home.

Devices 4 the Disabled was able to provide the family with a porch lift, a patient lift and a motorized wheelchair that the young woman can operate by sipping air from or blowing air into a straw.

The young woman, now 22, is living at home with her family and taking college classes, he said.

“We give people their life back,” Shea said. “There are people out in the suburbs who think that level of desperation only exits in some far, far away country. It’s only a couple of miles away.”

Another client, Misael Suarez, became a volunteer, working with clients who come to get their equipment from the distribution center during its Wednesday open hours.

Suarez, 23, was shot in 2021 when he was in a car with a friend. The friend was waiting for someone, and decided to drive away when he saw a group take notice of them. As they left, someone opened fire.

Devices 4 the Disabled helped Suarez’s mother get a motorized lift for their home, and helped him get a second wheelchair, so he has both a manual chair and a motorized chair.

Suarez said he’s happy to help at the distribution center, mostly by offering advice to clients.

“Just because sometimes there are people that are new to their disability,” he explained. “Sometimes there are things that the hospitals won’t educate them about, or they’re not able to find resources or ways to get help for certain things. It’s easy for me to help people to tell them how to do certain things.”

He also helps interpret for Spanish-speaking clients, he said.

There are no restrictions on the people who benefit from Devices 4 the Disabled.

“When somebody is referred to us, we don’t ask for paperwork. We don’t ask for any ID,” Shea said. “We just ask them to sign that they received the equipment as a donation. … There are people who are afraid to come out of the shadows. They just get the equipment they need and they go.”

The organization also provides value to families who donate equipment, Shea said. At the most basic level, it’s a green organization, reusing items that would otherwise end up in landfills.

But knowing that someone benefits from their donations can help people cope with the loss of their loved ones.

“There’s a story to every piece of equipment,” Shea said. “That was somebody’s life. That was somebody’s mother. Or, you know, you’ve created a legacy for your son. There is somebody’s life that will be profoundly changed because of your son’s wheelchair. People say, ‘My mother’s walker, my mother’s wheelchair — I couldn’t just throw it out.’ We had no idea how the people who donate the equipment would benefit.”

There are some limits on what Devices 4 the Disabled can accept. Power wheelchairs, for example, must be less than seven years old and be working when they are donated.

Staff at the organization can do some repairs and adjustments, Shea said. All donated equipment is inspected and disinfected.

“Maybe the brakes need to be tightened,” he said. “Maybe it needs a cushion.”

Devices 4 the Disabled can provide equipment such as shower chairs, often not paid for by insurance coverage that “stops at the bathroom door,” Corbus said, or help fill other insurance gaps.

“It really is a higher-level systemic problem that requires us to be here,” she said. “We have limitations on insurance. A lifetime wheelchair user can get a wheelchair — one — every five years. They don’t last that long. Or we have individuals who have their one device, and it’s stolen or it’s destroyed.

Corbus, who became executive director in 2023, said she began considering working for the organization after joining a colleague on a Devices 4 the Disabled service trip to Durango, Mexico, where it also supplies equipment.

While she was discerning what to do, she had a stroke, she said. While she recovered, that experience helped her gain a firsthand understanding of the obstacles disabled people face.

“I have been able to become a wounded healer,” Corbus said, adding that while she makes significantly less money, the post has its own rewards.

“To be able to work with people to know and see, without question, that the need is being met and we are making a difference in this world, that’s important,” she said. “The kindness and the compassion is real here.”

While Devices 4 the Disabled has grown, Shea wants to see it grow even more.

“Our goal is to be a national nonprofit,” he said. “There isn’t an area of the county that couldn’t use a Devices 4 the Disabled office.”

For more information, visit devices4thedisabled.org.