AFTER getting trapped in an elevator at YVR with her twin sister, Deepi Leihl did the opposite of panic.
Despite Deepi and Jodi both being in wheelchairs and unable to reach the buttons, Deepi refused to get in a state as her sister asked “what do we do now?” as the elevator moved up and down through the floors.
She remained calm throughout, confident that help would undoubtedly be on the way and the mini-drama would sort itself out. A few minutes later, it did.
During a near two-hour coffee break on a No. 3 Road patio with Leihl, it was abundantly clear the manner in which Leihl handled the elevator situation is typical of the way she tackles and embraces life on a daily basis.
Even the disabled-access curbs on No. 3 Road, en route to the coffee shop, are a challenge for the volunteer radio broadcaster, who has to angle her motorized wheelchair while keeping the eyes peeled on the back of her head for Richmond’s infamous drivers.
Nothing seems to faze her, however, much to the adoration and awe of her carer, Teresa Pimentel, who receives an inspirational boost from Leihl every time she spends her weekly day in her company.
“I love going out. I only get out four days a week, so I live for that,” said Leihl, who is Richmond-born and raised and has lived in the same Cambie house with her parents and twin sister for all of her 34 years.
“Everyone at Richmond Centre knows me; so it’s fun to go there. You never quite know what’s going to happen on any given day, so I just love every day.”
GROWING up in Cambie, after being born with a rare condition called metatropic dwarfism, Leihl had, what she calls, “a very normal” childhood.
In fact, the only thing abnormal was that she attended four different elementary schools in the district for reasons nothing to do with her disability — Brighouse, then Rideau Park, Mitchell and finally McNeely.
“I’d have loved to stay at Mitchell for longer, all my friends were there,” recalled Leihl of her school ages.
“But there were too many students and if you stayed on the left side of the map, you had to go to McNeely.”
At Cambie secondary, Leihl said she was a B and C-plus student, “never very keen on math” but loved cooking and drama classes, despite not always being able to participate because the stage wasn’t accessible 15-20 years ago.
And when she graduated in 1999, said Leihl, the crowd had reserved the biggest cheer of the day for her.
“I was a little bit emotional, but it didn’t really sink in until much later,” she recalled.
“It was a very proud moment and I’m still very proud of it to this day.”
Leihl spent an extra year at secondary because she didn’t feel as if she was quite ready for the world. “I needed to build up my confidence a bit more.
“It was very hard to leave. I wasn’t scared, but I was a little confused as my whole life I was known as a student; but now I wasn’t. I had to quickly find my own identity.
“I wanted to be a high school counsellor and studied psychology and sociology at Kwantlen. But I was never really interested in it, it didn’t excite me.”
What did, and still does, excite Leihl is the media, where she now focuses most of her creative energy as a writer and volunteer radio broadcaster for the University of BC station CiPR.
“(Broadcasting) has allowed me to express my experiences of life and it’s something I’m very passionate about,” she said.
“My passion needs to shine through in whatever I do. No disability should keep you from doing what you really want to do.
“When there topics in school that I couldn’t research because of my disability, I found another way to get what I needed.
“My mom (Jaswinder) is my rock. She has encouraged me to never give up. And no one has ever told me, you can’t.
“I have to find a different way to do things every single day of my life; it’s how I live.”
Leihl said she would love to study a broadcasting degree at BCIT, but would need a dedicated, full-time carer. At the moment, Leihl and her sister share most of their carers.
Asked what she dreams of, Leihl said simply, “I’d love a job that pays, just like everybody else.
“A radio job would be perfect and I’ll never give up trying. And I dream of living alone; but first I need to get a job. Patience is the key.”
