Sanmogam Pillay smiled proudly as his wife, Rajmani, wheeled him outside their Kent home on the East Hill last week to see the new wheelchair ramp under construction by volunteers.<\/p>\n
Pillay, 59, had suffered a stroke during open-heart surgery two years ago. It became a struggle for his wife and a caretaker to get him in and out of the house for appointments.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when employees from Lowe\u2019s Home Improvement, where Pillay worked prior to his stroke, decided to help out.<\/p>\n
Marie Parker, the human resources manager at the Lowe\u2019s store along Pacific Highway in Kent, said she came up with the idea to build a wheelchair ramp for Pillay after a phone call from his wife.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe called me and was crying because she didn\u2019t know what to do and could not transport him to appointments,\u201d Parker said as she helped complete a four-day project last week to build the ramp. \u201cWe needed to build this for him. It was hard work, but it was for a good cause.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than a dozen Lowe\u2019s employees from stores in Kent, Tukwila, Auburn, Federal Way, Renton and Bellevue donated their time and labor to construct a deck, wheelchair ramp and sidewalk that Pillay can use to easily get in and out of his house. The ramp and sidewalk cover about 100 feet from the back sliding door to the front driveway.<\/p>\n
Lowe\u2019s donated all of the supplies at a cost of about $2,000. The labor was worth at least another $2,000, according to store employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be much better,\u201d said Kamal Pillay about the ramp for his father. \u201cI\u2019m emotionally touched by the employees of this all-volunteer group.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sanmogam Pillay worked 11 years at Lowe\u2019s stores in Tukwila and Kent. Before his wife wheeled him outside the house to look at the construction of the ramp and for a photo to be taken, he had one request.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wanted to put a Lowe\u2019s vest on,\u201d Parker said.<\/p>\n
The workers spent much of one day in the rain. The weather dried out the next day when they poured the cement for the actual ramp. Crews used a wheelbarrow to transport the cement from the front of the house to the back.<\/p>\n
Kamal Pillay wanted the local newspaper to know about the story to help show the family\u2019s thanks for the work by the store employees and the donated materials.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought this is a story people should know about,\u201d Kamal Pillay said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sanmogam Pillay smiled proudly as his wife, Rajmani, wheeled him outside their Kent home on the East Hill last week to see the new wheelchair ramp under construction by volunteers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":10770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-10769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10769"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10769"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=10769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}