Word: martinez
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Robby Martin (Andy Garcia) and Reuben Martinez (Andy Garcia) are as different in personality as they are similar in looks. One has a good heart; he's happy without money. All he needs is his family and friends, and of course, the land of his birthright. The other brother is cruel and hurtful to the bottom of his soul; greed envelopes him. He would sacrifice his own family for money. These brothers are only cartoons--the good brother (Reuben) is a harmonica-playing angel, while the bad brother (Robby) is a polo-playing bandit, until, as in all fairy tales...
Nothing is simple in the life of the disabled. Breslin and Martinez not only live daily with such obstacles, they evaluate them as well. Breslin helped establish the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, while Martinez has traveled worldwide as a consultant on blindness (and she water-skis when she gets the chance). Despite Breslin's wheelchair breakdown, a day with them on the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area shows that commonplace life has improved dramatically for them since the advent of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Several years ago, for example, Breslin stopped at a drugstore near...
...annoyances remain. An assistant manager seemed vaguely huffy when Martinez asked for help finding cough drops. The clerk assigned to the task was polite but, Martinez confided, "sometimes they just take my [walking] stick and pull me along...
Later, at a Bay Area Rapid Transit station in Berkeley, Breslin had to wheel backward into a small, smelly elevator, while other people used escalators. Martinez, who also rides BART, feels safe there, thanks to bumps, or "edge detection strips" that warn the blind away from the edge of the platforms. Despite the tight-elevator problem, bart is regarded as a disability-rights pioneer. "It was such a treat to take this train when I came to California years ago," says Breslin, who was raised in the Midwest. "I'd never lived anywhere where there was access...
When Breslin's chair broke down an hour later, she was once again at the mercy of others. After telephoning a disabled-access taxi service, she had to wait nearly two hours. The driver charged $90 to transport her and Martinez to a wheelchair-repair shop across the bay. Strapped in her chair like furniture, Breslin rocked uncomfortably in the rear of the van with each high-speed freeway turn. A technician fixed her electric motor, and soon a friend arrived to help her get home. Such is the life of the disabled: determined, resourceful and, all too often, reliant...