Joe Kaluza ‘feels great’ 1 year after South Avenue shooting

By Katie Seminara

The former KFC manager says he’s ‘holding up’ after being paralyzed March 24, 2008.

YOUNGSTOWN — A robber’s bullet broke Joe Kaluza’s body, but it didn’t break his spirit.

“I feel great,” he said reflecting on the one-year anniversary of the shooting that left him paralyzed from the neck down.

Joe was the KFC manager who was shot during a robbery on South Avenue last March 24.

Joe is bound to a wheelchair and uses his mouth to operate a special strawlike mechanism that maneuvers his chair.

Although the paralysis in his body hasn’t changed, neither has the support around him.

“He’s never alone,” said Patricia Andio, one of Joe’s nurses from Maxim Health Care.

“After a while, it gets to you,” Joe said, laughing about the number of women at his side, including his wife, Lisa; 13-year-old daughter, Tiffany; sister, Anna Fitzgerald; and mother, Esther Kaluza.

“My daughter, she just wants to help me. If I’m going out I have to be home before she goes to bed, so I can give her a good night kiss,” he said.

Joe returned to his home on Ivanhoe Avenue last August and since then the house has turned into a “minihospital,” Fitzgerald said.

All the amenities Joe needs are readily available, but space is limited, she said.

“He can only move from the living room to the kitchen,” Fitzgerald said, because the halls are too narrow.

The entire family has a bit of cabin fever, but are able to get Joe out of the house about twice a week for shopping and errands.

More recently Fitzgerald has been taking Joe for light laser therapy treatments at the local chiropractors office of Dr. Phil Gainan. The treatment is also used for carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis and knee problems.

“The goal is to see if he can regenerate unhealthy cells,” Fitzgerald said. “To see if he can get some kind of movement back.”

Joe is on only his third treatment, and Gainan recommended eight to 15 treatments, she said.

“[The doctor] said Christopher Reeve was getting it done, and he started having feeling in his toes,” said Joe, who is optimistically trying any method to help get some movement back in his life.

The treatments are one way Joe and his family are trying to move forward, but their home is ill-equipped for Joe’s needs.

They bought a piece of property on Ivanhoe Avenue around Christmas and hope to start building a new, more handicap-accessible house this year.

“He didn’t give me much leeway,” said Fitzgerald of where she could look to buy property for the new house.

“We love our neighborhood and our neighbors,” Joe said.

Ideally the new house would be equipped with wider hallways, a lift to get Joe out of bed, and voice activated technology that could do things such as turn on the TV or open doors, Fitzgerald said.

“It’s obviously been a challenge,” she said of the past year.

“Joe will always have emotional ups and downs,” Fitzgerald said. “The initial shock is over, but the emotions will never go away.”