OPB features Geoff Babb, Bend’s inventor of AdvenChair.

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Five people move in tandem down a trail as it gets steeper and narrower than the bright orange metal frame connecting them.

This trail, popular with Bend, Oregon, families, is a testing ground for inventor Geoff Babb, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

One miscalculation about how to navigate the tight squeeze of boulders, and he could topple over the edge toward an ice-cold river below. But, that’s not what worries Babb, who hasn’t walked since a stroke 14 years ago.

“I don’t feel scared on the trail. I trust these guys to figure it out, how to get through those narrow spots without tipping me over,” he said.

As the team lifts him over rocks, Babb focuses on how certain components are working. He’s invested countless hours in this prototype for a new style of an all-terrain wheelchair.

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Story Preview | A DRIVING FORCE – Alesha Goodman

by Jake Sheaffer

“I once threw a canister of my supplement powder at the wall and dented it. That’s something I can’t imagine ever doing before my stroke, but it’s just another part
of my recovery to work on.”

______________________________

On an early October weekend in 2019, Alesha Goodman and her longtime boyfriend Drew hiked over 50 miles of rugged desert landscape in the Ochoco National Forest in Central Oregon. They were on a nine-day hunting trip they’d been planning for months. While Drew streaked up the steep slopes of sagebrush and loose rock, Alesha tarried behind breathing heavily, fighting the searing pain radiating from the base of her skull. An active thirty-four-year-old who frequented local gyms, walked her dog daily, and hiked on weekends, Alesha never suspected the severe neck pain and nausea she’d had for the past week and a half were signs of an impending stroke. And not just one stroke, but two. Two potentially fatal strokes that would occur within an hour of each other the day after she returned from the Ochocos.

An only child, Alesha was close to her parents and her grandmother who lived on her parents’ property later in life. As a kid, she delivered newspapers in her Bend, OR neighborhood, and in her spare time, she wrote children’s books for fun and read voraciously, prompting close friends to refer to her as a “living encyclopedia of odd information.”

On the Monday morning after she got home, Alesha sat in traffic at a parkway off -ramp, still in discomfort from the neck pain and the nausea. She had new symptoms, too, dizziness and feeling faint. Regardless of the pain, she readied herself for work, but she had an uneasy feeling about her job.

Over the weekend, Alesha had received multiple text messages from her employer, a jewelry company in Central Oregon, about an issue with her company email and password, but with no cell reception, she couldn’t respond to her manager’s concerns. After searching through Alesha’s desk for her email password and not finding it, but instead finding an important legal document she’d already dealt with but had not yet disclosed to her boss, the company hired a specialist to get around the digital safeguards. That day, Alesha was let go from her position.

Purchase the Book to Learn More About Alesha’s Journey!