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A Mother's Viewpoint by Mitzi's mom

Mitzi is my daughter. When we noticed that she was losing her sight we took her to about 12 different doctors in Phoenix. Half said she had hypoglycemia; the other half said she had Retinitis Pigmentosa. When she moved to Tucson we saw a retina specialist named Doctor Leonard Joffe who said convincingly that it was Retinitis Pigmentosa. We then went to the Jules Styne Eye Institute in San Jose, California. They confirmed Dr. Joffe's diagnosis.

They said it was hereditary and that led me to dig deeply into our family's genealogy. I have now gone back as far as the 1600s, but have found nothing.

It was so hard to watch her feel for things, walk into walls, and trip on stairs. I am her mother and I couldn't help. It was devastating. I then went with her to a one-on-one mobility training and was amazed at all the ways I could help her, even if I still occasionaly, accidentally, walk her into tables! She has a great sense of humor.

We bought games like Brailled Monopoly and Brailled playing cards. She still beats all our socks off.

When she started taking classes at the Tucson Association for the Blind, now called SAAVI, she learned how to work computers and then started teaching other people there how to use computers with a voice synthesizer. That helped her to get a small part time job at Sun Sounds, the radio reading service in Tucson.

When she started at Sun Sounds, as a receptionist, she first learned the radio station control board and later became the manager's executive assistant, and then eventually became the station manager herself.

She just amazes me and I couldn't be prouder of her. But all of her abilities have been learned over time and with a lot of trial and error. Her vision of EMVIA is to pass information along to others so they won't struggle along for years not knowing what is out there for them, and for people to have a wonderful successful life.