Our journey began with one family.
Our mission is to help many more.
Our journey began with one family. Our mission is to help many more.
When a loved one becomes severely disabled, the entire family's life can change overnight.
Daily activities become difficult. Specialized equipment is expensive. Transportation becomes a challenge. Caregiving can require enormous physical strength, time, and financial sacrifice.
For more than ten years, our family lived this reality while caring for our son, Vaughn.
Through that experience, we learned what families facing severe disability truly need — not only medical care, but practical equipment, mobility, independence, caregiver support, and hope.
That experience became the foundation for Three Apples Foundation.
Our Experience Became Our Mission
Vaughn’s Story
Vaughn earned a college degree, started law school, got married, and was building his life when after a routine flu shot, he developed transverse myelitis and became completely paralyzed. He cannot move his arms or legs. He cannot move a finger.
Yet Vaughn continues to communicate, learn, laugh, and engage with the world.
For more than a decade, our family provided full-time care for him. We stepped away from careers, used our savings, and reorganized our lives around his care.
As the years passed, one thing became increasingly clear: Caring for someone you love should not require sacrificing everything.
Families need better tools, better equipment, better access, and better support. That is why Three Apples Foundation was created.
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Our Mission
Three Apples Foundation helps improve the lives of individuals with severe physical disabilities and the family caregivers who support them. We work to increase:
Independence - Helping people with disabilities participate more fully in everyday life.
Mobility - Supporting access to equipment and solutions that make it easier to leave home.
Safety - Promoting solutions that make caregiving safer for both the individual and the caregiver.
Caregiver Support - Reducing the physical and financial burden placed on family caregivers.
Quality of Life - Helping people experience more than life within four walls.
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What We Do
Assistive Equipment: We help develop, improve, identify, and support practical equipment that can make everyday caregiving easier and safer. Our approach is shaped by more than a decade of firsthand caregiving experience.
Innovation for Daily Care: Many caregiving devices were designed without fully considering the person who must use them every day. Three Apples Foundation seeks to improve assistive technologies and develop practical solutions based on real caregiving challenges. Our goal is simple: Make difficult caregiving tasks easier, safer, and more manageable.
Help for Families: Families caring for individuals with severe disabilities may struggle to afford specialized equipment, mobility solutions, transportation, and other essential resources. As resources allow, Three Apples Foundation seeks to help qualifying families gain access to equipment and support that can improve everyday life.
Caregiver Education: Family caregivers often receive little preparation for the responsibilities they suddenly face. We seek to share practical knowledge, resources, and solutions learned through years of hands-on caregiving.
Life Beyond Four Walls
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For someone with severe paralysis, leaving home can require extraordinary planning.
A wheelchair-accessible vehicle, specialized chair, lift, or other piece of equipment can mean the difference between isolation and participation. It can mean going to a family celebration, visiting a park, seeing friends, attending an appointment, going to a restaurant, or simply experiencing the world outside the home.
Independence is not a luxury. It is part of living with dignity.
From Experience to Action
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We didn't learn about caregiving from the outside. We lived it. For more than a decade, caring for our son taught us what families truly need—and inspired us to help others.
We know what it is like to struggle with equipment that is difficult to use.
We know what it is like to worry about lifting someone safely.
We know what it is like to search for solutions that do not exist.
We know what it is like to become older while the physical demands of caregiving continue.
And we know how much the right piece of equipment or the right helping hand can change a family's life.
Now we want to use what we learned to help others.
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Many families want nothing more than to care for their disabled loved ones at home. What stands in their way is not a lack of love, but the realities of caregiving—the physical demands, the high cost of specialized equipment, and limited access to transportation.
Or simply not knowing where to turn for help.
Together, we can help remove those barriers.
Your support can help Three Apples Foundation develop better caregiving solutions, provide assistive equipment, support families, and create greater independence for people living with severe disabilities.
Help a Family Stay Together
Why “Three Apples”?
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