Whiz by on Interstate 5 and you might just miss it. Just off exit 258 behind the Shamrock Motel, sits a wheelchair taller than the average car.
The welded brown and silver masterpiece welcomes community members to the Al Boe Wheelchair Warehouse, one of the Bellingham Central Lions Club’s many programs offering free services to the residents of Whatcom and Skagit counties.
The warehouse houses medical equipment for rent by anyone in need. The services are free, no matter the income, and clients are only required to sign out wheelchairs, transport chairs and knee scooters. Additional equipment such as crutches, shower chairs, toilet risers and more are available.
The shop is only open twice a week — Mondays and Thursdays from 9–11:30 a.m. — so the parking lot is often hectic and the inside bustling with folks dropping off donations and picking up equipment. In its most recent fiscal year, which ended June 30, the organization served 5,100 clients, lending out 1,225 wheelchairs and transplant chairs, 315 knee scooters and 605 walkers, said Mark Kennedy, who mans the front desk.
But the number they are most proud of? “In that year, we had 3,441 volunteer hours,” Kennedy said.
Volunteers are heart of the warehouse
Volunteers are the backbone of the well-oiled machine that is the “wheelchair warehouse.” On an average morning, you’ll find friendly faces greeting customers, taking donations and helping people find what they’re looking for.
Inside, equipment is organized by type and jam-packed in every nook and cranny of the building. Wheelchairs and walkers snuggle up like sardines while pairs of crutches and wheels hang from the wooden walls.
Donated equipment must be sanitized and, usually, fixed up by volunteers.
“This is the most rewarding job I’ve ever had in my life,” volunteer Douglas Scholten said. “People come here distressed — grandma fell and broke her hip, she needs a walker, she needs a knee scooter. We have one and she leaves happy.”
Shower chairs and toilet risers get sent straight to Scholten, who towers over a plastic grate spraying cracks and crevices of the plastic equipment. “Nothing gets past him,” volunteer Ron Evans said of Scholten’s work.
Scholten, 78, is in his ninth year at the warehouse, though he still sometimes needs help prying equipment apart from station neighbor Jerry Hunter, whose primary job is to clean and fix up walkers. Hunter, 85, has volunteered for 14 years.
Hunter’s first duty was greeting people. “Every person that comes in has a story,” he said.
Evans, 80, thinks the group “feels like family” and the others nod. Evans, Kennedy, and fellow volunteer Bob Curtis are the management trifecta who make sure everything runs smoothly. Curtis, 83, is referred to as “the pillar,” but when asked what he does, they all laugh: “We’ve been wondering that the whole time!”
Of all the club’s programs, “there isn’t one that touches as many people as this one,” Curtis said. “It’s a heck of a service.”
The organization receives so many donations that to “keep it lean [and] try to keep it moving,” they partner with a Lions Club on Whidbey Island to drive surplus equipment to Mexico once a year for distribution.
On the other side of the wall from Scholten and Hunter is a darker room that smells like WD40 and Goo Gone. Steam — and the sound of it — fills the area, which looks like a miniature auto shop with three mechanical lifts.
Dealing with wheels
Hunched over their lifts in another room are the mechanics — Roger Hull, Bob Thirsk and Bob Thompson — whose jobs are to fix what’s broken, or as Thirsk said, “deal with wheels.”
Thirsk, 81, is not a self-described tinkerer. But the former higher education administrator enjoys his job: sanitizing wheelchairs. Each time his steamer stops, the sounds of tinkering and clanking echo through the room.
“The people that use the equipment are so appreciative, and it’s a great environment to work,” Thirsk said. “I work with really, really great people.”
Thompson’s fingers, wrinkly and stubby, are covered in grease and dirt. Known for doing the “pain in the rear stuff,” he said, Thompson is working on a walker, adjusting the brake.
Thompson, 72, was an HVAC service technician for 42 years. His daughter talked him into volunteering at the warehouse one year ago.
Clientele praises services
Outside the mechanic’s room in a sea of walkers, volunteer Nila Shriver helps client Robbie Winter raise a walker to its maximum height for Winter’s 86-year-old husband who recently got out of the hospital for COVID-19.
“I got the shower chair, the walker, everything you can imagine — and they’re fabulous,” Winter said.
Clients range in age, socioeconomic status, ability and mobility.
Sandy Lane arrived to donate equipment she found in the garage of her friend who recently died. “They’ve been so helpful during the times we need things, so I like to give it back,” Lane said through tears.
Other clientele included a man who was picking up a toilet seat riser because he was getting a double knee replacement, a frugal Western Washington University student who was borrowing a wheelchair to test it out before investing money into their own, and a husband holding paperwork from an occupational therapist recommending what his wife needed after injuring her foot.
The standard loan for wheelchairs and knee scooters is three months — aiming to bridge the “Medicare gap,” Curtis said — however, clients can always request an extension on their loan.
Because the warehouse doesn’t take electric wheelchairs, Curtis recommends people donate them to Mount Vernon’s Veteran and Community Mobility Center, which provides medical equipment to veterans.
The Al Boe program is primarily funded by donations, including the cash people put in an old gumball machine in the warehouse lobby. The Lions have also received generous donations from entities including Whatcom Foundation (to expand the warehouse) and the Paul H. Paulsen Foundation Fund ($10,000 of which was spent on a wheelchair cleaning machine).
St. Joseph Medical Center Foundation gifted the Lions $10,000 for supporting so many PeaceHealth clients. The money went toward paving part of the warehouse’s parking lot, where wheels kept getting stuck.
The program is entirely dependent on volunteers, who made up those 3,441 hours last year.
“Show up to volunteer when you can, but if you become a regular you have to tell them you’re not going to make it if you’re not,” Curtis said. “Otherwise, they worry.”
“We’re elderly,” Evans said, laughing with his friends.
For more information, visit bellinghamcentrallions.org/al-boe-wheelchair-warehouse or contact 360-752-5526; wheelchairs@bellinghamcentrallions.org. The warehouse is located at 4137 Bennett Drive.
Jaya Flanary is CDN's designer/digital editor; reach her at jayaflanary@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 106.
