[Music] - A case manager's not going to introduce a straight couple and say, "There's a straight couple that wants to adopt you.

Is that okay?

” So, there's no reason that it should happen to us.

- We all feel lonely because we were isolated, but then at the same time, I was going through this whole process of life in a wheelchair.

- For every 100 products we bought, they gave one to the community.

- I feel like I am living up the best potential that I can.

[Music] - The Rocky Mountains split Colorado along the Continental Divide, separating water distribution among other elements.

Geographically, the western side of the Divide takes up about a third of the state and only about ten percent of the state's population, but there are a wide range of people, perspectives, and voices to share from the Western Slope.

- Hi, how are you?

- We want to start with this collection of stories as we work to create a Colorado where everyone feels seen and heard.

[Music] - My name is Jay Wells.

I have two loves, guitars and motorcycles.

I was in a motorcycle accident and I lost both.

Back starting about 12 years old, I used to sneak my dad's guitar out.

He had a 1956 Telecaster.

I'm left handed, so I played it left-handed, upside down.

My buddy and I, Frank, we played all the time and we had good equipment, so we ended up playing in places because we sounded good.

I got in the band playing behind vocalists and I just fell in love with it because I love those background, either violins or steel guitar, pedal steel.

Those were the things I was actually copying, sometimes horn sections without realizing it because I'm just the background following the vocal stuff.

My grandfather sat me on a motorcycle when I was probably six or seven.

He idled it up and said, "Okay, go.

” I didn't have to do throttle, but I learned how to ride.

So, motorcycles were always part of my life.

I enjoy riding trails, evening rides, or in the morning.

We just happened to be up in the Book Cliffs and not really doing anything, following it, heading back, just following a trail.

The guy in front of me missed the turn.

He didn't know going downhill, there was all right hand turn, so he fell over.

It was one of those things.

In slow motion, I'm thinking, "That looked funny.

” I decided to miss him because I could have hit him and maybe hurt him a little bit, scrape him up, or something, but I decided to miss him.

My fall was just nothing, but I just hit wrong.

I hit the top of my head instead of the side, so that fractured the vertebrae, just the angle of the impact.

When they say quadriplegia, that's a scary word because that was all four.

I was paralyzed from the neck down.

They flew me to Denver.

There was a girl who met me there whom I had not seen in probably ten years.

I remember, they told me she asked the doctor, "Will he ever play guitar again?

” I thought, "Well, my biggest concern is am I ever going to be able to hug my girls again?

” Along pretty much past where my therapy has plateaued, my brother came by and visited, not really understanding what the word quadriplegic means.

He took his old Les Paul and put on my lap.

He said, "Play it or drop it.

” Well, come on.

And then, I realized, when I grab the neck, I naturally put my palm up and I found myself moving my fingers a little bit.

Yeah, I decided if I could move my fingers a little bit, let's go there and find out.

I started thinking about guitars and I thought of a Stratocaster because it's got the tummy cut and the forearm cut.

I start thinking, "Well, I'll just build my own.

” My first one didn't work.

It was okay.

My second one, I call it Quadra Caster II.

I used to play it, and then tear it down and cut some more out, and then play it.

I adapted them.

Then, when I built Q3, I had a good start.

It's a pretty fun one.

They're all pretty good because I can pretty much reach everything.

You'll see the way I play.

[Music] I've had a great-- I have beautiful daughters.

All I wanted to be able to do is hug them.

We do a lot of stuff together.

Just don't give up hope, because I had a lot of people say, "Oh, that's too bad.

” No, it's actually real good because now I-- Sure, there's a list of things I can't do, but guess what I can do?

And I do them.

[Music] - Well, as the legend goes, I was four years old and I was living with my mother in Mexico City.

We went to a bookstore that sold English language books.

They were expensive books.

I saw this one origami book, 'Secrets of Origami' by Robert Harbin.

I fell in love with the book.

I wanted the book, but my mom didn't want to buy it because it was so expensive.

In typical four-year-old fashion, I pitched a fit.

They had to take me out of the store.

Afterwards, my father, who was in town visiting, went back to the store and got me the book.

I basically taught myself from that.

[Music] From this book, I learned the language of origami, I learned how to read the diagrams, how to orient myself, and how to fold along the line, whether it's a mountain fold or a valley fold, how to turn the model around, or fold this edge to this point.

Just all the little bits and pieces of language that make up the instructions of making an origami model.

[Music] So, people talk about origami as the ancient art of Japanese paper folding, but the truth is that today's origami is neither ancient nor really Japanese.

Origami as an art form was revived in the 1950s by a man named Akira Yoshizawa.

He was Japanese.

But in Japan, at the time, origami was something that was taught to kindergarteners.

Kindergarten itself came from Europe.

It was invented in the early 19th century by a man named Friedrich Fr öbel.

The origami portion of his curriculum was based on the folding of napkins, which is why we start with a square and why we are not allowed to make any cuts.

Over the years, I did origami on and off.

I would do it for a few years, and then take a few years off.

In the mid 1990s, I got into modular origami, which is not representational.

We are not trying to fold something that looks like a bird, or a chair, or some object, but rather more of an abstract geometric style.

This one is called the tessellation.

It is basically a tiling of folds.

It's interesting because it is different on each side and it is a single, solid sheet of paper with no cuts.

People are fascinated by origami because it's a magic trick.

You are taking something very, very ordinary, a piece of paper, and transforming it into something else with only the magic of your hands and no additional ingredients.

[Music] So, why do I do this?

What's the point?

There is not much of a point.

It's more about the process than the product.

I enjoy folding a little piece of paper.

It gives me an escape into a very small and ordered world for a few minutes, and then I can pick back up with whatever I was doing.

It lets me be patient while waiting for something to finish or it lets me distract myself when I need to think about something that's difficult to think about directly.

It's just a tool that helps me get through the day.

At the end, you have this physical object that you can give away to people.

[Music] - When you're in a wheelchair, you can't hide.

You're gonna stick out and people are going to notice you.

It's okay that they see the chair first.

That's going to happen, you know?

I don't blame them for going, "Oh, a person in a wheelchair ”" I'm the only one usually in the room that's in a wheelchair.

I get it.

It's no secret that I'm in a wheelchair.

I'm not surprised.

Where do we go from there?

Are you only focused on what my disability is and me in a wheelchair or do you care about the person that's in the chair?

Do you care about the person that's sitting there?

What's their interests?

What do they like?

What's their personality?

So, it's where you go after that.

Maybe start with, "Hi, how are you?

” Or, "You look really great today.

” Or, "Hi, my name is this.

What's your name?

” It's okay to see the wheelchair, but then there's a person that's in that wheelchair.

So, I have a genetic disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

It's a mouthful.

A lot of people call it EDS for short.

It is a connective tissue disorder.

Essentially, all your connective tissue, think about your ligaments, tendons, all of that, are too loose.

Your skin, everything like that.

So, my joints dislocate.

I'll be walking, and then my hip will come out, or my SI joint will come out, or whatever it is.

I did have it on my life, but it progressively got worse.

I didn't know what it was.

It took six years for us to figure out what the heck was going on.

It's not about the disability, it's about who I am as a person.

So, I want to keep being me.

I want to keep doing the things I love.

I want to keep going out, and do my favorite things with my husband and our dogs, and going on walks, or rolls.

I grew up dancing.

So, that was hard when I started having to use a wheelchair, realizing that I couldn't do dance, or I thought I couldn't do dance.

The empowering side of it is that it's more a mindset than it is about your disability.

I started using a wheelchair right before quarantine, and then we went into quarantine.

It was a whole new experience because not only did we all feel lonely because we were isolated, but then, at the same time, I was going through this whole process of life in a wheelchair and life as a woman with a disability.

So, it felt lonely on a different level.

Through Instagram, I found this dance company called the Rollettes.

It's a wheelchair dance team.

I grew up dancing, so I was so excited when I saw that there was a team of dancers just like me.

Doing it chairs, and just like, "Oh, that's cute, ” but like, "Oh my gosh.

They are good.

Okay, they can dance.

” When you're the only person in the room that looks like you, that moves like you because you're in a wheelchair, and then you enter a room of over 200 women that look just like you and are rolling around just like you, I can't even explain the feeling.

The confidence I gained from Rollettes experience, and being there, and realizing that I wasn't alone and I didn't have to give up on life, or who I was, or what I did, just that I could be a confident young woman that I am and don't have to limit myself just because my brain tells me, "Oh, you're in a wheelchair.

Now, you can't do this.

” The confidence that I've gained from my disability of being like, "Okay, if I'm going to be in a wheelchair and this is what it's going to be, then what do I want people to see?"

[Music] - Life as a foster parent over the last eight years has been kind of crazy.

There's been a lot of ups and downs, really goods, and kind of some really rough times, but overall, it's been a journey that we would definitely do again.

My name is Jared Prochnow, and this is my husband, Matthew Foster.

We have been married for five years, together for 15 years.

Over the course of our eight year journey, we have fostered over 60 kids and we've adopted six.

So, we have Ty and Ethan.

They're a sibling group.

They were our first adoptions, actually.

Ethan was the first one that we adopted, followed by his sister, and then Isaiah and Josiah were our second adoptions, and then our final two are Alexander and Jackson.

Most of our kids, when we adopted them, were teenagers.

So, we knew our time with them would be short, but we still wanted younger kids and we wanted the experiences of parenting.

So, then when we found the youngest two, they were three and six at the time.

We've really had the opportunity to really raise them and have those fun moments.

We decided to kind of quit while we were ahead.

Six kids is a lot.

We've actually been really fortunate, at least I feel like we've been really fortunate.

However, there have been several times.

I remember one specifically that there was a sibling group, I think, of three boys that were potentially adoptive and they wanted to potentially place them in our home.

The case manager from DHS talked to the kids and said that there's a gay couple that is potentially interested in having you in their home.

Are you guys okay with that?

All of the boys said no.

So, there wasn't even a possibility of meeting these kids or going through that process, which is frustrating just because that's not something that would happen to a straight couple.

A case manager's not going to introduce a straight couple and say, "There's a straight couple that wants to adopt you.

Is that okay?

” So, there's no reason that it should happen to us.

That is really kind of the big one that has stood out to me, being a gay couple in the foster care system, but it's frustrating at times.

- That's good.

- I told you.

- When we got out here, the first thing that I told him was this probably won't go so well because we're going to Fruita and it's very rural, but then Fruita's really embraced us and we've had a lot of backing.

So, even in those moments of chaos and uncertainty, everybody was still here.

Coming to Fruita has really made us blossom as a couple and as a family, but it's also been our main support.

So, it really pushed us through a lot of things in the end.

It's exciting to see where we're at with a lot of the kids.

We have the opportunity, like you mentioned, to raise the younger two almost from the time that they were young enough to really be able to remember, but then at the same time, we've had a huge impact with the teenagers.

It's a little scary to kind of push them out of the nest.

We've really only had a short amount of time with them, but the young men that they've become are incredible.

Our daughter, who's 22, is an amazing person.

She made us grandpa's two years ago.

So, we get to play around with our granddaughter, who's another incredible kid that we get to spend time with.

It's really been a fantastic Journey.

[Music] - When I brought up free menstrual products, people were like, "In Hickville, Nowhere?

” This isn't even the Front Range.

This is Western Slope.

I was like, "We're going to do it, ” and we did it.

For someone like me, I've had an experience, especially in middle school, where I didn't have anything, and I was super unprepared, and you have that walk of shame to the nurse's office.

As a young person in school, knowing that like I've been through that and other people are going to go through that, I really just want people to be comfortable and know that if they go through something like that that they're covered by their school and that they don't need to do that walk of shame to the nurse's office every time.

I was doing SAT practice and I was like, "I'm kind of bored, so let me look into period poverty and statistic on those.

” There was a study shown in a New York school that they provide free menstrual products, and attendance went up by 3%.

Three percent attendance increase doesn't seem like a lot, but anything that can get students to get to school is a big deal.

So, I printed out those infographics and I brought them to school.

I think I printed like six copies and I gave them to teachers and administration that I trusted, and had experience with, and that I liked, basically.

A few teachers told me that they would bring it up in meetings.

About a week later, I get a call from the principal.

I'm like, "Oh shoot.

” Thought I'd have even a little bit of resistance, but I didn't have any.

So, this is a women's restroom here at Fruita.

This is what the dispensers look like.

You just press one of these buttons and a pad comes out, or you can press this button and a tampon comes out.

So, we decided to use Aunt Flow, who is an organization that offers 100% organic cotton pads and tampons.

Their whole slogan is they give back.

So, for every 100 products we bought, they gave one to the community.

We bought almost 9,000 products, so that's helping a lot of menstruators annually.

These are free.

You can definitely see how many are in a bathroom.

Immediately, I saw a positive reaction from students.

A day after they were here, five random people that I barely knew said that it helped them that day.

So, it's helping people every single day, either they can't afford products every single month, or they just forgot, or they weren't prepared for getting their period that day.

A big reason why I was so passionate about adding these into the school was because it's just crazy that we accommodate-- We have toilet paper and paper towels.

We have to use those things.

It's just crazy that we didn't have menstrual products.

So, I guess with the implementation of premenstrual products here in the school, I'm really hoping that other schools will catch on in the district, especially that, hey, this is really helping the students out.

Attendance is hopefully going up.

[Music] - I feel like I am living up the best potential that I can as a police officer who is a magician, or in this case, as a magician who is going to be a police officer.

So, magic showed up.

I was in the fourth grade and Chris Angel had just released this awesome magic kit.

Everybody in my class was getting it.

So, I would go into the stuff that wasn't necessarily self working, that required a little bit of skill, and I started showing those tricks off.

All my friends who had the same exact thing as I did were impressed.

So, I was like, "Man, if I can do this and impress them with what they know, imagine how much farther I can take it if I can do what they don't.

” Childhood was not easy.

There's a lot that I can go into, but it was hard.

There were times that were worse than others and there were times that put my family through the wringer.

It felt like bad luck just followed us everywhere.

If I didn't have bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all.

Whether that was going through foster care or sleeping at the school, it just was hard knowing that.

I don't mean just I didn't get a shirt or whatnot, it was wondering if there was going to be a place that I could sleep that night.

I was in theater.

I have done all the plays.

I had been the musicals.

It was just great.

we'd stay really late sometimes.

One night, I was like, "I'm just gonna-- I'm just gonna stay here.

I'm just gonna go upstairs and I'll find a spot, but I can't go home.

I'm not going home tonight.

” I just wanted to be alone.

I just wanted to kind of have a spot that I can not have to be as adult as I was being.

I remember one night, I was just sleeping.

The janitor was vacuuming up on the third floor.

I was like, "Oh no.

How did I not think of this?

Why are they here?

” I'm just waiting for her to find me.

They're gonna call my mom.

She stopped right here.

Here's the beam, here's me, and she stopped right here.

And then, the next day, woke up and did it all over again.

Went to school, went to theater practice, went back up to my little spot.

It was hard, but it was-- I made do.

We're gonna take out a card.

Okay.

This is gonna be the card.

All right, we're going to give the deck a cut.

I'm gonna my snap our fingers.

Something magic should happen.

You'll see one card out of all the others change, but it would only be impressive if that was our card.

So, if we flip it over and we see it is the card, but there's more here.

Watch.

We're going to take that and we're going to put it right here for now.

We're going to leave it right there.

We're going to get a new card.

We're going to stop about right here, and his is going to be the new card, all right?

Now that we have that card, we're going to put it right there.

We're going to snap our fingers.

Something magic is going to happen.

It might not happen here, but we have this card right there, and it's right there.

[Laughs] As of right now, I'm a detention deputy at the Sheriff's Office.

I'm joining up with the police department and going to the academy this January.

I feel like being a police officer and a magician, it goes hand in hand.

It is one of those perks of being able to use what I know to help other people, to make people feel better.

I've seen that happen already in my job at the jail.

I believe that as a police officer, as a detention deputy, we are there to help everybody, not just the people who crimes happening to, but the people with the crime, the people with the mistakes.

Being able to open myself up to somebody and show them, hey, this is why I'm here.

This is what I do.

If that could even just help them find their purpose or if that can help them just smile a little bit, I know that I'm doing my job.

I think you did it too hard.

[Laughter] I don't think that was supposed to happen like that.

[Laughter] That's one of the best parts of being a magician is I get to make smiles and get to make people feel good.

So, it really does just go hand in hand.

[Music]