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Joe Velasquez of Turlock has won a lot of honors as a Navy veteran, a wheelchair athlete and a man who inspires others. He's just claimed another award, perhaps the most unusual -- he's pictured on a cereal box.
Velasquez, often called "Rollin' Joe," is one of 12 gold medalists from the 2008 National Veterans Wheelchair Games chosen to be pictured on select boxes of Cheerios. The photo shows him playing pool; he competes in several sports and swimming has been his specialty.
The Cheerios boxes are sold only at military canteens and bases. As part of a promotional tour, Velasquez has visited three veterans hospitals in the past two weeks, signing autographs on, of course, Cheerios boxes. In July, Velasquez will compete in the 2009 Veterans Administration National Wheelchair Games in Spokane, Wash. At the 2007 event, he not only collected five gold medals but also was selected for the "Spirit of the Games" award.
Velasquez was injured in a 1983 accident, when the car in which he was riding went out of control on an icy road in Idaho.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From The Modesto Bee in California:
