Tyler Stosich’s wheelchair is controlled by a straw. Normally, he doesn’t think twice about it. But COVID-19 turned normal on its head, so Stosich decided to innovate.
“I was just sitting in the shower where my best ideas come to me, and I was like, man, I’m just going to route a piece of tubing through that mask,” said Stosich, who lives in Missoula and is involved with Camp BullWheel near Ennis, a relatively new camp dedicated to helping people with disabilities fish independently.
With the help of his girlfriend, Kelli Walsh, Stosich has converted a small handful of N95 masks to be compatible with a sip-and-puff wheelchair, the kind he and others with little or no use of their arms and legs often use.