Success Stories
Peer Mentor and Share-A-Chair Program Founder Troy Plunkett
Jul 1, 2021
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Troy Plunkett founded a nonprofit to support people with new spinal cord injuries in the California Bay Area and to ensure that no one ever had to feel as helpless and dependent as he did in the wake of his injury.
Registered Chair-ity
Before Plunkett became a T8-9 paraplegic because of a motocross accident in April 2003, he considered himself an independent person. Three weeks after rehab, sitting in a rented hospital wheelchair at his high school graduation, his perspective changed.
“I always go back to that moment of feeling so dependent, having to get pushed across the stage to get my diploma due to the wheelchair and not having enough function or strength to go up the ramp, down the ramp and across the grass to the stadium,” says Plunkett, 35. “That always stuck with me.”
He didn’t want anyone else to ever feel that way, so in 2015 he founded the SCI Active Network. The nonprofit organization is dedicated to connecting people with SCIs and their families with peer mentoring in the California Bay Area and empowering them to live active, independent [...]