Jack Sheehan on the dedication of two families working to bring to Las Vegas the resources and support much needed by blind people and their loved ones

Sunday, Nov. 11, 2007 | 8:04 a.m.

"What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that, you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all."

- Barbara Kingsolver

Close your left eye completely. Now gradually lower the lid on your right eye ... ever so slowly ... until it's completely shut. Now get up from your chair and move forward and start living the rest of your life without ever opening your eyes again.

That's a horrifying prospect, but that's exactly what faced longtime Las Vegas registered nurse Angela Beller Hoffman in the last six years of her life. Angela had lost her left eye in 2000 to a debilitating condition that might have started with oxygen deprivation at birth. Week by week, month by month after that, the vision in her right eye was failing. Neither surgeries nor medications nor prayer would stop her inevitable descent into total darkness.

Eventually, frustration with her blindness and the debilitating depression that overcame this previously self-sufficient woman would claim her life. Despite the ongoing support of her mother, Mary Ann Beller, and her brother, Willi Beller, and his wife, Debbie, she slipped further and further into depression. Just one day after her sister Pam O'Connor was admitted to the hospital with terminal ovarian cancer, Angela took her own life. She had fought the good fight for more than five years, but hadn't been able to find enough help in Las Vegas to address the huge challenges of moving through a world of blackness.

On several occasions, Angela's brother-in-law Tim Garvin had been called at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., and told that Angela was lost on the streets of Las Vegas and had no idea how to get home.

"That was such a helpless feeling when I'd get those calls," Garvin tells me. "One time I phoned a cab company in Las Vegas and asked if they'd take my credit card number and run the meter and just drive up and down Durango until they found a blind woman with a guide dog.

"The dispatcher said they'd never done anything like that before," Garvin says, "but eventually we were able to get her home safely. That's just one of hundreds of stories that give you an idea how frustrating it was for an intelligent and capable woman like Angela to get through her days after her sight was gone."

Tim Garvin is married to Angela's sister Patti, and after they'd lost both of her sisters in a five-month span two years ago, the Garvins and the Bellers committed themselves to doing everything they could to make certain other visually impaired adults in the Las Vegas community would not find themselves as devoid of resources and support as Angela had been.

Thus was born the dream of building Angela's House, a training facility for the blind that will prepare individuals and families to live independently by receiving access to services, education and recreation. Once Angela's House is established, it will offer training programs five days a week for orientation and mobility (cane travel) and daily life-skills training. In addition, provisions will be made for computer training using adaptive equipment, Braille reading and writing and self-advocacy techniques. A support group session will be offered for ideas exchange and ongoing growth.

"We'll also have a strong mental health component," says Tim Garvin, "because the depression element is so prevalent in people who lose their sight. It's hard to imagine how difficult it is for people who've had vision for many years to be plunged into a world of total darkness. That absence of light takes over their brain and their spirit, and often people seek alcohol or strong medications to escape that reality. Obviously, those depressants just make everything that much bleaker."

"On the night that Angela died, she had enjoyed a nice barbecue with my mom and brother, and seemed to be in good spirits," says Patti Garvin. "She hid it pretty well from us. And she left no note. My sister had always been a strong and powerful woman, but I believe we lost her due to depression brought on from blindness and from a broken heart."

Tim Garvin had spoken with Angela on the phone that day. "We talked about a five-dollar bet she'd made on an NFL football game, and she laughed and told me she was horrible at picking winners. I told her I was no good at it either. I've been over that conversation in my head a hundred times, to see if I missed some signal or warning. I had no idea that she was on the edge of ending her life."

A local organization, BlindConnect, which offered Angela a degree of comfort and camaraderie, has worked with the Garvins and the Bellers over the past three years to raise funds for Angela's House. The group's annual Poker Run, held last month, raised $15,000 for the cause. Although that amount wouldn't get you an opening bid for an auction item at high-profile fundraisers like those benefiting the Nevada Cancer Institute or Larry Ruvo's Alzheimer's facility, Garvin is enthusiastic. "We know we have some tall hills to climb to get this done," he says. "And it's never easy putting the arm on people for yet one more cause to support, when we know there are so many worthwhile charities in the area that need support. But there are times you just have to roll up your sleeves and get busy because you know it's the right thing to do.

"Watching Angela's struggle in the last years of her life moved me in ways that are hard to describe. It's bad enough to be sightless, but even worse not to have sources of support and help in that predicament. We don't want anyone to have to go through that in Las Vegas ever again."