Limitations don't keep Springs bell-ringer from living large

Alphie Omar sits in a wheelchair, ringing a bell. The familiar red kettle of the Salvation Army sits nearby.

“Hullo,” Omar says in his deep, throaty baritone. “Hullo.”

He greets all, whether they feed the kettle or not.

He’s at ground zero of the holiday hustle: The Citadel mall.

Some soldiers walk by.

“Thanks for serving our country,” he tells them.

Omar, 34, often gets asked if he’s a war veteran. He’s not, but he understands the misconception.

He is missing both legs. His arms are flipperlike stubs.

He taps an oversized metal candy cane that is connected to the chair. The motion rings the bell at the end of the cane in this getup custom-made for him.

“What happened to your arms?” a pony-tailed girl in purple velour asks with genuine interest after dropping money in the kettle slot.

Omar smiles.

“It’s the way God made me,” he tells her. It’s easier than reciting medical terms for birth defects, and it puts people at ease.

Some blatantly stare. Others quickly look the other way when they realize the figure ringing the bell mainly consists of a trunk and a head.

Omar prefers that people acknowledge him.

“Thalidomide?” a man asks, referring to the drug linked to severe deformities that was banned in the early 1960s.

No. Omar was born in 1975.

“Do they pay for your college education?” another man asks.

“It’s been a while since I have been in school,” Omar says. “I had a hard time getting there.”

He rings the bell as he talks. He makes $7.28 an hour from Goodwill Staffing, and he’s there to earn it.

Seeing people, life eye-to-eye

Omar’s legless pants, sewn shut below the waist, hide feet that protrude directly from his trunk.

“They are not big enough for shoes,” he says, “not big enough for socks, either.”

Though undeveloped, his feet are useful for getting around. He can walk in a waddle.

He prefers to ride in his power chair. It’s faster and it puts him at eye level with people.

When he meets people, he extends his stumped arm. He expects a handshake, even if he doesn’t have a hand.

He has spent his whole life adapting to a world that’s designed for people with fingers and toes.

As a kid, he tried wearing artificial legs and arms, but prosthetics held him back.

“I kept falling down. Plus they were pinching my hips and digging into my skin,” he says. “I couldn’t pick up anything with the fingers.”

His mom, Dee Thomas, decided to leave him as-is.

“Those things were pretty cosmetic to make everyone else feel more comfortable around him,” she says. “I didn’t see any reason for it ... and it was a waste of state funding.”

Thomas, 53, has four other children, all with full sets of limbs. Alphie was her second child as a single, teen mom living in Brooklyn.

“They didn’t know what caused it. They didn’t think anyone could survive with those deformities,” she recalls. “They said his head was too big for his body. I said, ‘Are you kidding? He is missing half his body. He is going to look a little disproportionate.’”

Living a full life

Omar has had issues with cognitive delays since childhood. But he won a spelling bee in the third grade, claiming victory by correctly spelling the word d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s. Today the delays aren’t really apparent.

A black-and-white portrait of Omar as a schoolboy hangs outside a conference room at The Gazette. It was taken for a story published in the 1980s. He appeared in Gazette stories in 1995, when he graduated from Fountain-Fort Carson High School, and when he moved from his mom and stepdad’s house into an apartment in 2002.

For three years, he had his own pad. “I got behind on my rent,” he says.

His mom, who is also his legal guardian, says people took advantage of him.

Omar moved into Union Printers Home in 2005. He has a single room on the assisted living wing that houses 22 residents who are much older.

“It’s still a little strange,” Omar says.

“The caregiver helps with showers. I do limited shaving. I can’t reach under my neck. If I have the time and the money I go to the barber.”

To eat, he slides a fork in a Velcro strap around his arm. The strap can also hold the pen he uses to write in neat cursive. He can dial a cell phone and tap out letters on a keyboard. He rides the city bus to the library to check his e-mail.

He uses the ab roller in his room to tone his chest. For the ladies, he says.

He met his last girlfriend through a telephone chat dating service he discovered on a late-night TV ad. He’d like to find a permanent special lady.

“Some girls want guys who are tall and rich,” he says.

He is 2-foot-6 and gets Social Security.

“I tell them I’m a black man and I got a tattoo of a Playboy bunny on my shoulder. I got it seven years ago from Snake’s tattoo parlor after I was at a strip club for a bachelor party,” he says.

“Let’s just say, I’ve done a few things.”

He’d like to learn how to drive a car.

“With those special controls,” he says.

Even the little things in Omar’s life require special attention. His mom created the Velcro arm bands that hold utensils.

“I’ve always tailored all his pants,” she says. “Even shorts. You have to sew across the bottom of the shorts. I hate to see it pinned up or rolled up, it just looks tacky.”

She decided about a year ago to task Omar with his own tailoring.

“I told him, ‘Take a pair of your pants — clean ones, make sure they are clean — to the tailor and show them what to have done to have it adjusted for you. But first ask how much it costs to get it done.’”

Thomas sees this as an important step for both of them.

“I need to challenge him now to really start being independent,” she says. “In the natural course of life, mom or dad will not be around. He needs to do things for himself.”

She can’t solve everything.

“I think he carries a lot of pain inside, but he doesn’t show it,” she says. “He never pities himself. He is happy-go-lucky.”

A dependable worker

Omar’s bell ringing job is over for the year.

What’s next is uncertain.

“I don’t have anything lined up,” Goodwill counselor Steve Tooke says. “I have been trying to get him other jobs. A call center environment would be good.”

Omar was laid off from the last two call centers. Other jobs didn’t mesh with the bus schedule.

Tooke frequently asks employers to at least give Omar a chance, only to be told: “He won’t work well in this environment.”

What’s left unsaid is whether that has more to do with Omar’s looks than his ability.

“He is dependable and takes pride in doing a good job,” Tooke says. “If he says he is going to do it, he does.

“Sometimes you wonder how he does it.”

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Call the writer at 636-0253.