No hero here

COEUR d'ALENE - Some stop to offer help when Michelle Porter is working out. Some are determined not to stare.

What irks her, though, is when someone tells her she's a hero.

"I'm not a hero. I just work out," Porter said with a shrug. "It's no big deal."

It's hard to avoid that kind of thinking, though, when watching Porter, paralyzed from the waist down, conquer the resistance machines at 360 Fitness.

The petite 38-year-old has tailored her own method of swinging her frame in and out of her wheelchair onto the resistance machines. Sometimes it requires muscling herself into a perch, sometimes spreading her legs and throwing her body - in "unladylike" fashion, she jokes - to mount the padded seat.

"At first it was embarrassing," she admitted. "I didn't know how to get out of the machines. Once I tried to lift myself out and I flew out onto the ground. There was a guy next to me who wanted nothing to do with it, and I was grateful. I just wanted to get back into my wheelchair and keep going."

Falling didn't stop her from trying again, though. It hasn't before.

Not when she was first learning to use a wheelchair after the accident when she was 16. Not when she learned to monoski or plant an orchard by herself in her Athol yard.

She has taken on fitness like she has any other activity: Keeping at it until she gets it, in whatever way works.

"That's how I've adapted. I just do things because it's out of necessity," she said. "If people ask me, 'How did you know you could do that?' I say, 'Nobody told me I couldn't.'"

So far, it's working.

With taut biceps and a chart of how her waist has slimmed several inches in two months, Porter has effectively proven how a fitness regimen can benefit anyone, wheelchair-bound or not.

Now well past her shy stage at the gym, she's determined to help others achieve her success.

Porter is in the midst of creating a cycling group in Kootenai County that allows disabled cyclists to integrate with the non-disabled, which locals can learn about by calling her at 664-9896.

On top of that, she plans to film her own DVD teaching other disabled people how to work out in a regular weight room, which she has arranged to advertise in Chloe Magazine.

"I just think a lot of people don't even know what to do. I know I didn't even know what to do until I did it," she said.

Porter says she wants to spread multiple messages: First, as she has learned working at the Disability Action Center in Coeur d'Alene, that disabled people can assimilate into regular society.

And second: If she can get fit, anyone can.

And everyone should.

"I believe that being in shape and doing the things you want to do are important," she said. "If I can inspire somebody to work out and they feel good about themselves, they'll inspire somebody else, and so on and so on."

She didn't always have such a jubilant outlook.

But then, she was only a teenager when the car accident occurred.

She admits it was silly, letting her 14-year-old friend drive her car when she was still living in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Porter was sitting in the passenger's seat, more friends packed in the back, when everyone was distracted by boys, she remembered.

Suddenly the Jeep Cherokee drove up on a curb, hit an oak tree and rolled several times, beating up the car until it looked like a "Cracker Jack box," she said.

Still in shock when the car had come to a stop, Porter tried to move out of her seat, and grabbed a leg.

"I said, 'Whose leg is this?'" she remembered. "I realized it was my leg, and I couldn't feel it."

After reality sunk in that her spinal injury had left her unable to walk, she reacted obstinately, she said.

She lashed out at those trying to help her in the hospital, and later acted the reluctant student in learning to adapt to her disability.

"I never learned from the people who were supposed to teach me, because I never let them. If I fell, that's how I learned," she said. "I'd do everything the hard way, basically. That's the type of person I am."

Distraction was appealing, too. She became a partier, she said, experimenting in drugs and alcohol.

"I didn't feel worthy, I think. Not ready," she said.

Things started to improve after she moved to Post Falls in 1994 to be near her parents, where initially she felt depressed and isolated.

It suddenly struck her that it didn't have to be that way.

She missed being involved with people, she said, and realized there was no reason she couldn't integrate back into society.

"I realized I just didn't want that lifestyle anymore. I pretty much dumped all the party people I hung around with," she said.

She moved to Athol and started looking for God, she said. She examined how others dealt with their problems, and spent a year as a foster parent.

"You look at other people's lives, and it's amazing what they go through and how they adapt to things," Porter said. "Anytime you look at other people's lives who have gone through something hard, you readjust what you feel."

Determined to keep active, she started landscaping her yard, problem-solving around her wheelchair by using a spade instead of a shovel to plant trees.

To build her strength, she started exercising.

It affected her more than she expected.

After only a couple months, she said, she has better balance and can lift her neighbor's toddler over her head, which she could never do before.

"I thought it would be good for my looks. Come to find out, oh my gosh, it's beneficial in so many ways," she said. "Everything in my life has improved."

She's making an impression on others, too, said Lynda Peters, general manager at 360 Fitness.

"When you first see her, you think, 'If she can do that, I can certainly reach my own goals,'" Peters said. "She gets back there and lifts with the guys. She's one of them. It's awesome."

Porter never asks for help, Peters added.

"People walk in (to the gym) and say, 'I can't do this,'" she said. "Well, you can. You can change your body and change your life."

Porter now bubbles over with plans: Maybe training for Ironman, maybe earning a personal trainer certification.

But above all, she wants people to look beyond her wheelchair, and see a woman with drive, commitment.

And some serious abs.

"I want to be like everyone else. I just happen to be in a chair," she said. "I don't think people have the right to tell anyone else what they can or can't do."