By Bill Bishop
The Register-Guard

The morning routine – getting up, bathing, shaving, dressing – is a 2½-hour ordeal for Paul Jensen and his caregivers at a south Eugene assisted living center.

When he’s finished, Jensen, 50, severely disabled since birth with muscular dystrophy, sits in his customized wheelchair in the center’s lobby.

Unable to use the joystick that steers most wheelchairs, Jensen move his fingertips to cover and uncover light sensors to control the direction and speed of his chair.

He’s anticipating the arrival of his assistant and his weekly outing to a shopping mall, where he’s having lunch on this particular Monday with Bree Grissell, a 23 year-old nursehe met and befriended when she worked at the center a few years ago.

If not for the help of the Legal Aid Service of Lane County, Jensen says his wheelchair would be parked in his room and his mind would be climbing the walls.

Jensen lost his precious weekly outings last year when the state’s Senior and Disabled Services program stopped paying an assistant $10 per hour to accompany him to ensure that he safely navigates his wheelchair. The agency said that the trips weren’t a medical necessity and that the services of an assistant for the trips didn’t qualify for payment.

Any bump in the sidewalk can jar Jensen’s arm and move his fingers out of position to operate the chair. Jensen can’t move them back himself.

From October to January, Jensen sat in this room feeling stranded. In the meantime, a Legal Aid lawyer took the state agency to a hearing over the decisions. It was one of 72 administrative hearings that Lane County Legal Aid lawyers handled last year for disabled and low-income residents in similar disagreements with government agencies.

Jensen, whose government benefits allow him $90 a month in spending money, could not afford to pay an assistant for his trips or pay a lawyer to fight his case.

“I was really down. The world was just closing in on me,” Jensen recalls. “For me to stay confined in a room, in one spot, that would be paramount to giving up on life.”

For most of his life, Jensen has been remarkably active and independent. He worked 14 years full time as a computer programmer for Oregon State University until he was forced to quit 10 years ago when his elderly parents no longer could keep up with his care.

To qualify for government programs to pay the high monthly costs of an assisted living center, Jensen had to qualify as a low-income applicant. He had to quit his job, cash out his public employee retirement fund and spend his savings to become eligible.

After Jensen moved into a the center, a psychologist prescribed the outings to help fight depression that builds from living alone in a place where he is the youngest person by decades.

“The way my family raised me, they took me everywhere, school, vacations. I was mainstreamed long before anybody ever thought of that. I was out there, involved all the time,” he says.

The prescription, and Jensen’s physical presence at a hearing, were key to winning the case, Legal Aid lawyer Jim Kocher says. Jensen testified that his wheelchair became stranded by bumps three times on the one-block trip from the parking lot to the hearing room, Kocher says.

Senior and Disabled Services rules forbid the agency from discussing the case, according to an agency spokeswoman.

Kocher says the agency was sincere, but wrong, in its belief that Jensen’s trips didn’t qualify as medical treatment. Evidence showed the trips weren’t a luxury, but a necessity for Jensen’s mental health.

"The fundamental thing about Legal Aid is you believe that poor people have rights. What a radical concept! It is to some people,” says Kocher, who has worked nine years for Legal Aid.

“I think we really make a difference. It’s really important when you help someone like Paul.”

Grissell says the outings are critical for Jensen to feel a part of society, “like an actual human being.”

“He has to rely on someone for all of his needs,” she says.

For Jensen, the case was another victory in his continuing struggle.

He notes that laws governing disability benefits recently changed to allow him to work without losing housing and medical coverage. Had the rules been in place 10 years ago, he says he wouldn’t have had to quit his job and spend all his savings to get government help.

“I want to get back to work,” Jensen says. “For now, this day a week out is a life saver. It has changed my whole outlook. My family’s support caused me to be an active person. I’m not ready to give up and die. A lot of people who are disabled get to that point.”