Worker that lost his legs in Boston construction accident walks again, eyes new beginning

When Wilson Ortega strolled out of the hospital, he smiled to the throng of reporters and ruffled his jacket, seemingly more preoccupied with combatting the morning’s brisk weather than any concern regarding the new prosthetic legs he was walking on.

In May, Ortega lost his legs when part of the construction project at South Boston’s Edison Power Plant collapsed on the worker. More than 100 firefighters struggled for hours to extract Ortega from the rubble.

When a reporter asked Ortega what he was most grateful for, his response was simple.

“For life,” he said through an interpreter.

Ortega was cutting wood when the ceiling collapsed on him. When he looked down, his legs were gone. Ortega doubted he would ever walk again, even when he received the prosthetics.

“The first day he put those things on him, he thought he was never going to walk,” said Ortega’s interpreter.

Ortega credited his team of care workers at Spaulding with helping him stand tall again.

“He doesn’t seem like coworkers, he sees them like family,” said Ortega’s interpreter.

Spaulding may have provided the means to walk again, but it was his seven-year-old son that instilled in him the desire to.

“He always think about what his son would do if he couldn’t walk. If he wasn’t here. That was his motive to live and keep going,” said the interpreter.

When asked if he would ever like to return to a similar line of work, Ortega smiled and shook his head. Instead, he hopes to use the beginning steps of his journey as a source of inspiration for those who need it, working as a speaker or source of guidance for those suffering from trauma or depression.

He also has a much simpler goal.

“He wants to run,” said Ortega’s interpreter.

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