Disabilities Lead Couple
Down Road to Success
He could have been a chicken farmer and she could have been still working in a grocery store meat department had their separate disabilities not led them to the SC Vocational Rehabilitation Department.
Instead, Eric Schultz is the service coordinator for the SC Department of Disabilities and Special Needs Board in Kershaw County and Sandy Schultz is a field psychologist with the Chesterfield County schools, based in Cheraw.
In high school, Eric had dreams of parlaying his talent on the bass guitar into a professional music career.
But by age 21, he realized, “I needed a better plan.”
He has mild cerebral palsy in his legs and someone mentioned VR might be able to help.
Vocational testing indicated he would do better with a white-collar job, so he enrolled in Francis Marion College, with some financial assistance from VR.
“I majored in history, but I soon realized there’s not much future in that,” he said. “I wanted to help people, so I switched to psychology” and earned his Bachelor of Science degree.
He graduated in December of 1995 and went to work for the DDSN board in Hartsville the next April. He’s been in the Kershaw office for five years.
She works in Cheraw and he works in Camden and they live in Darlington.
“I drive 100 miles a day, but I’m well satisfied,” he said.
Eric worked one summer on a friend’s chicken farm and “got a good taste of real work. It taught me I needed more,” he said.
With his counselor’s support and guidance, he said the VR program really worked well.
“It gave me the opportunity to get where I wanted to,” he said. “Without it, I’d probably still be at the chicken farm.”
In October of 1993, Eric was already going to Francis Marion when a drunk driver hit the car Sandy Schultz was driving two weeks after delivering the first of their two children.
The tendons around the thumb on her right hand were severed in the accident and she was in a cast until January.
“I couldn’t even give our baby her first bath,” she said. Fortunately, grandmothers were close by.
She went to VR in 1994 where her tests indicated she needed to go back to school.
With VR assistance, she took classes in Human Services at Florence-Darlington Tech for a year and a half and got straight As. She enrolled in the psychology program at Francis Marion and earned a Bachelor of Science. She went on to get her master’s degree in applied science and is 30 hours short of her Ph.D. in school psychology.
VR “gave me a foothold to get where I am today,” she said.
She works with special needs children at four schools in Chesterfield County and looks forward to working with VR’s new School-to-Work Transition Program.
“I really believe in the (VR) program,” she said. “It’s really benefited my family.”