Dennis McCarthy: Their love is unimpaired

Mike DeYoung, a quadriplegic who was undergoing rehabilitation at Northridge Hospital, later married nurse Kristen Richardson. The couple now lives in Chatsworth. (Maya Sugarman/Staff Photographer)

She says it so matter of factly that the words almost slip by without comment. Can't let that happen. They go right to the heart of this story.

Kristen Richardson and Mike DeYoung had been dating for a couple of months when she invited him to see her apartment.

"It was on the second story with no wheelchair access," says the registered nurse at the Center for Rehabilitation Medicine at Northridge Hospital Medical Center.

"I lifted Mike out of his wheelchair and carried him piggyback up the stairs. Later, I carried him back down."

Mike's not a little guy. He's a tough rugby player - one of the stars on the Northridge Knights, the quad rugby wheelchair team sponsored by the hospital.

Ten years

Mike DeYoung, a quadriplegic who was undergoing rehabilitation at Northridge Hospital, later married nurse Kristen Richardson. The couple now lives in Chatsworth. (Maya Sugarman/Staff Photographer)

ago while snowboarding at Big Bear he did a back flip on his snowboard and landed on his neck, breaking his C5 and C6 vertebrae, resulting in quadriplegia.

With years of hard work, therapy, and the sure hands and pep talks of Dr. Thomas Hedge, medical director for the center, Mike became independent again.

He tried out for and made the prestigious USA wheelchair rugby team that competes all over the world.

"We don't want people to think that because they have an impairment they have to cut back on life," Hedge says. "Mike sure didn't."

But there was something missing in his life. He found it one day in a gym class at CSUN's Center of Achievement where he was working out.

There was a good-looking nurse supervising student teachers. Kristen was there earning her master's degree in kinesiology for exercise science.

A few weeks later they met socially at a school party. They talked, exchanged phone numbers, and agreed to catch a movie or concert together some day.

But it didn't happen. Then one Thursday night at a support group Kristen ran, Mike showed up unannounced. He was ready to make his move.

"I just loved his smile and ability to be so independent," she says. "You don't see people at his level of injury able to do what he does."

Pretty soon, that movie and concert happened, and the two began dating regularly. Kristen flew with him to rugby tournaments all over the country, and even to Brazil to watch him play for the USA wheelchair rugby team in international games.

Just before Christmas last year, Mike made a special DVD he wanted Kristen to watch and show her parents when she visited them in New Hampshire for the holidays.

"It was slides of all the places we had been together and pictures of our families," Mike says. But it was also more.

Kristen watched it, thinking this was really nice of Mike to do. Her family would love it.

"About halfway through, there's a slide of a ring with the words `Will you marry me?' above it.

"I just burst into tears and said yes," the new Mrs. Kristen DeYoung says.

He knew she was the one, Mike says Friday, busy recruiting other wheelchair athletes for the Northridge Knights.

He knew it the moment she lifted him out of his wheelchair and carried him up those stairs to see her apartment.

Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_18353237?source=rss

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