Polly Hunt Mendoza Class of 1995
A Movable Feat
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n her senior chapel talk, Polly Hunt Mendoza ’95 talked about her older brother David, who has Down Syndrome. During summers when she was a teenager, she volunteered for organizations that facilitated outdoor sports and other adventures for young men and women like him. Mendoza saw firsthand how the Special Olympics and other opportunities built David’s confidence and helped him engage with the world. But even then, she didn’t imagine she
would make a career out of helping adults with developmental disabilities. That epiphany came while working for a nonprofit in Costa Rica; while there, a visit from David changed the course of her work. It was the first time David had traveled by air on his own. When Polly saw the pride on his face as he walked off the plane by himself, she had an idea: to build an organization that could help the developmentally disabled travel.
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Polly Mendoza ’95 with her brother David, at Red Sox training camp
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Polly relocated to Colorado and in 2008 incorporated Healthy Independent Leisure & LifestyleS, or HILLS, a nonprofit specifically tailored to teens and adults with developmental disabilities or traumatic brain injury. The following year, she ran three trips; by 2010, the number had increased tenfold. Mendoza started out small. She first organized a day trip into Denver, where a small group had lunch and took a tour of the Celestial Seasons tea factory. It went well, so she planned her first multiday excursion, to Santa Fe. Next was a weeklong visit to Disney World, which has become HILLS’ most popular offering. In 2010, she expanded the catalog with a tour of Graceland in Memphis, a tour of Bryce and Zion national parks in Utah, a cruise to Mexico, and a trip to Red Sox spring training in Florida. Demand keeps growing, and Mendoza anticipates still more destinations in upcoming seasons. The biggest challenge, Mendoza said, is that most of the time she is running the show on her own or with one or two subcontractors, who help with everything from keeping clients calm in new situations to navigating wheelchairs through airports. But she has no doubt her endeavor is worthwhile. Not only does she witness other people undergoing the same confidence-building and excitement that has helped her brother David, but she sees the benefits ripple beyond those she is serving directly. “When clients take our trips, their parents or other caregivers get a break, which is something some of them have never had. One woman last fall who sent her son on one of our trips said she had never been in her house alone prior to that.” Mendoza is aware that, on some level, she is raising public consciousness when she leads a group of adults with physical and mental disabilities on an excursion. When she brought a group — some with almost no physical mobility and others nonverbal — to Memphis to visit Graceland, the pilot of their plane told her he had never seen a group of disabled people travel together like this. It opened his eyes to their potential — they could have the same experiences other travelers take for granted. Mendoza’s future plans for HILLS are multifaceted. In the longer term, she would like to expand to other states; currently HILLS serves a mostly local population near its Denver headquarters. More immediately, Mendoza would like to purchase a wheelchair-accessible van, rather than renting one on a trip-by-trip basis. “Everyone deserves experiences like these: seeing the Grand Canyon, going to the beach,” she said. “Someone might be nonverbal or need twentyfour-hour physical support and supervision, but they can still get so much out of these opportunities. And vice versa: the public stands to benefit so much from seeing that our [special needs] population can do this.” For more information on HILLS, visit hills-inc.org.