Wheelchair was towed as woes piled up

Monday, Aug. 6, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.

You're on the streets. You get run over by an 18-wheeler. You wind up in a wheelchair.

You drink too much on the July Fourth. Metro Police arrests you.

The wheelchair gets towed to a yard downtown. You get out of jail, try to get your wheelchair back. You use crutches to get to different agencies, but mostly use the phone because it hurts to walk. One night in late July, once again, an officer runs across you with a can of beer and sends you to jail.

By this time, you've learned that $200, nearly half your monthly Social Security check, will get the wheelchair out of the yard, a special price brokered by a dogged social worker.

The catch: you have only until Monday. After that, the wheelchair goes up for auction Aug. 24, when you'll still be in jail.

Now what?

City officials, a Salvation Army worker, that social worker, an agency called Straight from the Streets, Metro officials and who knows how many others were trying to figure that out Friday, ending in a race to the finish spurred perhaps by remorse.

The man at the center of the story is Joey Johnson, a person the federal government calls chronically homeless. These are people who are on the streets the longest, often suffering from mental illness, addictions and disabilities. They spend much of their time in and out of public hospitals and jails.

Studies say they cost society much more as they go through those revolving doors than they would if they were placed directly in housing with 24-hour services such as counseling.

But such a program does not exist in the Las Vegas Valley, with its estimated 11,300 homeless people.

Johnson said he moved here in 2002 after a convention center in San Diego laid him off. He worked for a roofing company for a while, but didn't do too well.

He wound up on the streets. He likes to drink Budweiser.

One September night in 2004, Johnson, having skipped out on a program to treat his crack addiction, fell asleep under a green Mayflower moving truck parked at a tire shop on Industrial Road, across from the Crazy Horse Too strip club.

About 2:30 in the morning, the 18-wheeler's driver climbed into the cab. He dragged Johnson about 100 feet and kept on going. Six months later, Johnson was out of UMC, practically crippled.

After another year-plus of filling out applications to Medicaid, in November 2006 he got his Jazzy brand electric wheelchair. Its value: up to $5,000.

Then comes the July Fourth, 2007. Johnson said he was "just sittin' around here, some guys comin' around, try to take my money." After a scuffle, he was arrested and charged with a pedestrian violation, malicious destruction of property and disturbing the peace.

Within a week, he was back on the streets.

On July 19 he found a phone number for Kate Osti, a social worker at Nevada Disability Advocacy and Law Center. He asked for help getting back his wheelchair.

Metro told Osti it did not order the wheelchair impounded. Ewing Bros. towing company said it did, and told Osti to call the Nevada Transportation Authority, which regulates towing companies.

By statute, towing companies must charge everyone, owners of Cadillacs and wheelchairs alike, the same fees - including $130 for towing, $24.62 per day for storage and a lien after five days in the yard.

After Osti's calls, the towing company made a special request July 25 to the state agency, asking if it could charge Johnson less. The agency agreed to a $200 fee, provided the wheelchair was picked up by Aug. 6.

Ewing Bros. "did not have to do this," agency chairman Andy MacKay said. "They're doing a very kind thing in my eyes."

Cheryl Ewing, the company's sales manager, called the whole thing "a weird situation."

For her part, she tried to contact Johnson, but discovered he had no address. She called the company that sold the chairs, Academy Medical Equipment. The company knew Johnson, but not where to find him.

Then on July 29, Johnson reappeared, sitting at the bus station on Casino Center Boulevard, drinking beer with some friends.

He threw a can at the garbage and missed. Some marshals stood nearby. Johnson, a black man born in Meridien, Miss., muttered something about discrimination. They arrested him, charging him with littering, pedestrian or vehicular interference and disturbing the peace.

He'll be in jail until Sept. 23. He'll turn 41 behind bars on Aug. 28.

By Thursday night private and public agencies across the city were trying to find a way to get Johnson back his wheelchair, before the special deal expired today.

An official at the Salvation Army - where Johnson receives his monthly checks - agreed to take his most recent check to the jail. He did that Friday morning, finally completing the task after a 1 1/2-hour wait.

Meanwhile, Las Vegas officials said they would be glad to take $200 of Johnson's money over to Ewing Bros. and offered to store the wheelchair at the jail until late September - though they had no plan to get the chair out of the lot.

Metro spokesman Jose Montoya, after trying to figure out how the chair got to Ewing Bros. in the first place, concluded: "The bottom line is it was probably bad judgment on the officer's part."

So Metro "made some calls." The chair was ordered towed again - to Metro's evidence vault.

Johnson can pick it up when he gets out of jail, Montoya said.

It's unclear who sprung the chair. City officials said they had someone take Johnson's money to the lot. But Ewing said Metro signed for it.

Montoya said policy may not be clear on situations like the one Johnson faced July 4. But in the future, officers will be told not to order wheelchairs towed.

"It's a policy thing," he said. "And it's also doing the right thing."