Accessibility, love coincide for California couple

From the On the Couch column in the San Francisco Chronicle:

It was 1991 when Sara Bolder, now 56, first met Jim LeBrecht, now 53, but at that point, she was a single mom focusing on raising her daughter, and the charismatic man in a wheelchair didn't pierce her focus. The two worked on a film crew together, but lost touch soon afterward.

Twelve years later, they ran into each other at the Zaentz Media Center, where Jim, an accomplished sound designer, was running Berkeley Sound Artists. Sara was on her way out of the building, and out of the film business, moving to work in nonprofits. (She now works at Progressive Jewish Alliance.) Jim suggested lunch, right then. She joined Jim and his colleagues for a going-away nosh. Afterward, a friend, noting the great energy between the two, gave Jim this advice: "Don't screw this up."

The two were coming from different places and going different directions. Sara had been heads-down parenting and had a long dating dry spell behind her. Jim was a busy "experienced" dater. "I'm a real people person," he jokes, an obvious truth.

He suggested a movie. It was 2004, and they went to see the acclaimed "Ray." "It didn't hurt that Ray Charles was disabled and also sexy," says Jim, who was born with spina bifida. "Turns out there was a real reason for the cool shades."

After the next "Is this a date?" outing, Jim had a revelation. "I like being in the world with you," he told Sara. She wondered about their status. "We're 'visiting intensely,' " she was told.

Soon, Jim invited Sara to his house for a home-cooked dinner. A glass of wine led to a make-out session. "But I knew to take it slowly," Jim says. "I was concerned with her heart."

A year and half later, Jim was getting tired of schlepping up the steps to Sara's non-accessible North Berkeley home. "Although when it comes to food and pleasure, I can get anywhere that anyone else can go," he adds.

Being with someone in a wheelchair is not something Sara thinks about much these days, but she does get angry when she sees prejudice.

"I don't notice it myself," says Jim, smiling, "but I like it that Sara sometimes get angry."

In 2006, Sara asked Jim to marry her, "beating him to the punch," though the two, now living in their accessible Oakland hills home, have no plans to do so immediately. "Marriage wouldn't change my commitment," Jim says.

"I was always anti-marriage," says the somewhat shy Sara, noting that her gregarious future husband would need to invite "400 of his closest friends" to such an event. "Now I can appreciate long-term commitment," she adds.

On meeting at the right time:

Sara: "Jim has impeccable timing. My daughter was grown, and I was ready to venture out."

Jim: "I was fed up with tirelessly looking for someone. We came to each other at the right time from different ends of the same spectrum."