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Shelley Osterloh ReportingA Salt Lake teenager who was paralyzed in a car accident three months ago will get a big surprise when she gets home from the hospital next week.
Family and friends pitched in to make her home accessible, but found they needed help. The Utah volunteer foundation called Heart to Home has answered the call.
Seventeen-year old Lena Schoemaker will soon leave the University of Utah Hospital so she is learning how to take care of herself.
Lena Schoemaker: "It'll be good to be home because I've been in the hospital for almost three months, so I'm kind of ready to go."
She was a star basketball player and honor student at West, but last August she and her mother, Lorraine, were in a car accident. Her mother died and Lena was paralyzed from the waist down. Her father George is thrilled to have her coming home, but their house needed to be remodeled to make it wheelchair accessible.
Family friends got it started, got the designs and permits and started the demolition, but decided they needed some help.
Steve Johnston, Family Friend: "It's over our heads and everybody is trying to do it while they do their day job too."
So even though the Heart to Home Foundation just finished a huge home build in Sandy, they agreed to help out.
George Schoemaker, Lena's Father: "When I heard about it I wept all the way to work. These kinds of things don't happen to me. "
Lena is due home next week, so volunteers are scrambling to find donations so they purchase materials and find painters and skilled workers to lay the laminate floors and tile. Though many of their resources are depleted from the last project, Heart to Home organizers are optimistic people will help.
Tiffany Berg, Heart to Home: "We can't help every family but the families we do help, it changes their lives forever."
Volunteers expect to have the work finished in time for Lena to be home for Thanksgiving.
