SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KTXL) – Sometimes life throws you a curveball when you least expect it, changing your life in ways you can’t possibly imagine. However, one man teaches us it’s how you respond to it that changes your perspective.
“I just want to show up for people,” Tim Healea says, and it is exactly what he’s doing.
The Roseville resident says he is not letting his circumstances hold him back from living life.
“I want to be able to communicate with or show later-in-life amputees in particular, but earlier-in-life amputees too, that they can do what they’ve been doing or start some sort of new chapter in their life,” Healea said.
“I hear far too often of people that have gone through this or that and sit at home in their wheelchair. They give up what they had done. I’d like to motivate them to not give up what they had done.”
Healea, nearing his 70th birthday, found out just a few years ago while playing golf, he suffered from onset rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that occurs when the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks healthy joints.
Healea continued, “There’s always a loss, but I didn’t let that be a sense of defeat. I like to believe I’m living proof of that. I proved my surgeon wrong from the first time when he told me I wouldn’t play golf when I had this one done in January 2021,” Healea says pointing to his right leg.
“He said I wouldn’t play golf until fall. I told him I’d be playing by my birthday in June, and I was playing in April. “
The Roseville native is now taking his passion for golf to the big stage. He’s set to tee off in this May’s 2023 Ping US Disabled Open presented by the PGA of America and hosted by PGA Golf Club in Port St Lucie, Florida.
“I’m looking forward to seeing some of the people I’ve met in the past year and a half… incredible, inspiring people. They’re the bravest strongest people I’ve ever met. It’s such an incredible feeling to be around positive people who’ve overcome so much.”
