RENTON, Wash. — Steve Ferreira doesn't take "no" for an answer.
"Nope!" he said, with his usual broad smile.
He's a top-level athlete and an advocate for people with disabilities. Now, with the help of some students and their teacher, Creed Tremaine Nelson, Ferreira has also become a bit of an inventor.
"This should be fun," said Ferreira, as he prepared to strap himself into a largely untested piece of exercise equipment.
Ferreira was born with cerebral palsy, a condition that makes it difficult to move and speak. But he communicates just fine with the manufacturing and design students here at Renton's Lindbergh High.
Nelson, Ferreira and the students have teamed up to create fitness equipment that can make exercise accessible.
"He comes in and within five minutes he's won over the whole class," Nelson said. "They absolutely love this guy."
Senior Gabby Politsch called Ferreira "a pretty cool dude."
"Seeing that we're actually helping someone it puts a lot more passion into our work," said classmate Lucas Pone.
Together, they're creating prototypes of fitness equipment that can be used by people of every type of ability.
"It's kind of ridiculous that gyms these days don't have any accessible equipment," Ferreira said.
Despite the medals he's earned in para-athletics, Ferreira has felt the burn of ignorance at the gym.
"An employee said to me, 'Why are you here? You're in a wheelchair,'" Ferreira said. "People with disabilities can work out. My wheelchair is just how I get around. It doesn't define me for who I am."
To advance the cause of accessible fitness, he's also working with mechanical engineering professor Tyler Susko and his students at the University of California Santa Barbara to create adaptable machines that can be used for modified or conventional workouts.
"What is currently available on an exercise machine that exists in a typical gym right now, and how would we modify that?" Susko said.
Ferreira's dream is that one day soon, people with disabilities will be able to exercise side-by-side with everyone else.
"Trying to do this for gyms that could be able to use this throughout the country," Nelson said.
And Steve Ferreira's not planning to take "no" for an answer.
"This is how I live my life," he said, "I may not be perfect but I can still be like you."