Carrying A Torch for Special Olympics
The 25th annual Torch Run, named for fallen HPD officer and Special Olympics coach Troy Barboza, is Friday. City, state and federal police officers will again be out in force to show support
By Chad Pata
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if someone wants to be in our program and they have intellectual disability, they are in our program. We would rather err on the side of inclusion than exclusion. No real test, but if teachers say they need to be in, they are in.”
Teachers are not the only ones who notice a difference in the behavior of the kids with special needs from being in the program. According to Bottelo, 10 percent of people with intellectual disability are employed nationwide, but of participants in Special Olympics, 50 percent are employed.
“When you are on a team or have a coach, you learn you have to follow rules, and there are consequences if you don’t,” says Bottelo, who adds they disqualify athletes if they do not swim an event right or don’t maintain their lanes during a race. “They learn to follow rules and then they can hold jobs, they do better in school ... it is just such a big snowball effect. People say, ‘Oh, you are just sports,’ but we are so much more than that.”
Bottelo’s passion for those with intellectual disabilities dates back to her teenage years, a time when people with special needs were treated as trash rather than treasured.
“When I was in high school, before there was Special Olympics, I used to do volunteer work in mental institutions in the city,” says Bottelo, who has served as SO president since 1987.
“I used to see people chained to the floors, I’d see so many people there that today would be productive, tax-paying citizens because they could be holding jobs. But then everybody was just pushed out.
“So when I walked into our first Young Athlete Program at Klum Gym, I literally had to walk back out and catch my breath, because to see all these kids that 40 years ago would have been have trashed interacting and playing with their parents was so good. Back then you would have been told to just forget you even had these children, so to see them with their parents doing these wonderful things was really incredible.”
Though they always had a place in her heart, helping out the less fortunate was not always the goal on her career path. After graduating from Washington State she followed her “boyfriend of a lifetime” Buddy Bottelo to the Islands where she started out in the ad business, selling for KIKI radio and Honolulu Publishing.
While Buddy stuck around, eventually becoming “husband of a lifetime,” a bit of kismet occurred while she was running Jacki Sorensen’s Aerobic Dance Program.
They were asked to help out fundraising for the Special Olympics and Bottelo ended up raising $100,000 for them in 1982.
This won her a place on the board of directors and five years later she found herself at the helm.
“This is exactly where I should be, it is such a perfect organization,” says Bottelo who originally committed to doing the job for only five years. “Just to see how we are changing the way the world looks at people, giving people the right to have jobs. It is amazing.”
Beyond helping out the athletes, they have a new commitment toward educating the public and trying to stomp out the rampant use of the “R” word: retarded.
“It hurts our athletes to the core, but then also think about the parents,” says Bottelo. “If you had a kid with a disability and you kept hearing that, every time someone had something that didn’t work right or didn’t function right. We are just trying to change the way people say things. It is mean, even when they don’t mean it.”
Their campaign to end the ignorance goes on year round, as do the games.
Though the torch lighting does mark the apex of their season, Bottelo says that on any day during the year you can find some kind of event going on whether it be a swim meet, soccer game or round of bocce.
The cauldron lighting is open to the public and they encourage any and all to come down and enjoy the festivities and cheer on the athletes. For those out there who want to do more than cheer, volunteers are always welcomed. In order to assure that as much of the donations as possible go to the athletes, they operate with a skeleton crew of just seven full-time employees while utilizing more than 6,000 volunteers statewide.
If you would like to participate in the run, you can contact Bottelo and her staff at 943-8808 or go online at www.specialolympicshawaii.org.
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