And speaking of close and scary encounters, right in Lake Park, Jernigan was crossing the street at the crosswalk and a lady in a vehicle ran into her and proceeded pushing the wheelchair across the street.

“I don’t even think she realized until her passenger said something to her, and they kept going,” said Jernigan. That particular day, scared and shaken up, Jernigan didn’t finish her trip to Family Dollar and Winn-Dixie. She called her sister, who asked whether she called the authorities with a tag number.

“I told her, ‘Do you think I got a tag number!’”

When she did have a car she could operate and slide in and out of her wheelchair, Jernigan has been stopped on the side of Lake Park roads with a dead battery, unable to get out of her car, waving at passersby for help and no one has stopped. After she could no longer drive with a properly-equipped vehicle when her condition worsened, Jernigan has been riding along in her chair, hit a hole, fell out of her chair, and attempted waving people down only to see them keep riding. In both incidents, only one kind soul in each situation stopped, after hours of agony for Jernigan, to lend a hand. Jernigan said that despite color, age, or condition, we no longer seem to have regard for our neighbors.

Through all these adversities, Jernigan has remained strong and able enough to raise her granddaughter, Victoria. At 16 months, Victoria still could not talk. “We got in contact with Babies Can’t Wait and started speech therapy, working with her until age 4. By then, she was talking 90 miles a minute,” laughs Jernigan of her enthusiastic granddaughter. The two do homework together, collect and watch movies and DVDs, and play games on the computer, which is also how Jernigan does all her Christmas shopping for Victoria and pays her bills.

But everything can not be taken care of from the confines of Jernigan’s home.

“Victoria has programs at school and church that I can’t attend. I’d love to see her do things and I know she would love for me to be there, but I can’t,” said Jernigan. Jernigan recalls the time she got to attend one of Victoria’s events because a woman came from another church and gave her a ride in her handicap van, dropped her off, went all the way to her own church, and came back and picked her up and took her home again.

“I had told Victoria I would be there, and at first, she couldn’t see me in the audience. She looked so sad, but when she looked out and found me, her whole face lit up and she sang at the top of her lungs,” said Jernigan proudly.

Without the proper equipment, Jernigan misses many important things in Victoria’s life as she can often only attend via phone conference. “I tried to get a van from one place and was told I had to have a job to obtain help. I told them I do have one, a full time job at that, that’s taking care of my granddaughter.”

MIDS provides transportation for Jernigan and Victoria to doctor appointments, which is covered by Medicare, but that’s it. Jernigan would love to see the little girl she saved from “the system” perform at school and church, but there is no help for this grandmother doing what many other grandparents have taken on.

“I would also like to see precedent set on grandparents to have rights to their grandchildren. I am not the only one who has taken on the challenge of raising their grandkids, and I would like to see kids treat their parents nicer,” said Jernigan. “I see these court shows and have heard of cases with children against their parents and trying to keep children from their grandparents. We need rights too.”

Although Jernigan has Victoria and faces transportation challenges, she said, “We make it. We get things accomplished, but Victoria is getting too big to ride on the chair with me. But we always make it.”