By Fallan Patterson
Staff Writer

Amanda Ruiz surprised classmates and teachers May 25 as she walked for the first time across the stage at the Osceola High School graduation at Osceola Heritage Park.

Using a quad-tip cane and her aide Olga Bird for support, Ruiz, 18, who has cerebral palsy, received a standing ovation as she ceremoniously stepped across the stage and accepted hugs from Superintendent Terry Andrews and the Osceola County School Board.

“It feels great,” Ruiz, one of the high school’s 415 graduates, said. “I put a lot of hard work into it.”

Walking was no small feat for Ruiz, who has been wheelchair-bound most of her life, after being diagnosed with the brain and nervous system disorder as a toddler.

“I just noticed she wasn’t walking correctly,” Amanda’s mother, Marisol Rivera said, adding a series of MRI’s and visits with many doctors led to the final diagnosis.

In 2004. Ruiz underwent surgery to cut into her hip bones and straighten out her legs. Even after years of physical therapy, Ruiz was still unable to walk.

“It was very hard for us,” Rivera said.

Added to her physical disabilities, Ruiz has struggled academically, particularly in reading and comprehension.

“She’s three years behind when it comes to her brain,” Rivera said. “I’m always telling her she can do it.”

It was only in her senior year, with the help of her paraprofessional aide, Bird, Ruiz began believing in her own potential. Ruiz was in the Exceptional Student Education program, where special diplomas are awarded to students, depending on their level of disability. However, Ruiz wanted a standard diploma and worked with the school’s staff and her family to create an Individualized Education Plan that allowed her to take regular classes.

“ESE students are the ones that get special diplomas but not all ESE students get a special diploma,” Osceola County School District spokeswoman Dana Schafer said.

The standard diploma will allow Ruiz to continue her dream to attend Valencia College “to work with kids like me because I know what they’re going through,” she said.

Ruiz hasn’t let her physical limitations keep her down. In addition to staying after school to work with Bird on trying to walk, Ruiz got up from her wheelchair to take pictures at homecoming and prom, although she danced in her wheelchair at both events.

Overcoming her shy nature to attend dances, graduating with a standard diploma and walking at graduation would not have occurred, Ruiz and her mother said, without the support of high school aide, Bird.

“She pushes me to do stuff that I think I don’t know how to do,” Ruiz said.

Rivera said she “noticed a big difference” in her daughter in the year has worked with Bird.

A licensed physical therapist, Bird expanded her abilities to become an aide at Osceola High School. Ruiz, whom Bird calls her butterfly, is her first student assigned to her for a full school year.

“When I first met Amanda, she was just very timid. I saw somebody there who was not developed,” Bird said. “A lot of people helped her, it was not only me. I’m going to miss her a lot because she is my buddy.”

Bird gained Ruiz’s trust by asking her what she wanted out of her final year in high school.

Ruiz began doing her hair, agreed to go on dates with boys, developed a crush and participated in a school fashion show for prom, all things Bird attributed to the teen’s growing confidence. Ruiz even participated in debate class for the first time, which made Bird cry.

“When you have a person like that, it’s good for me too because (you realize) nothing is impossible,”Bird said. “I make her do everything the other kids do. She’ll no longer be that little girl in the wheelchair.”