Freedom and a Hannukah miracle

Celinda Levy was a successful psychologist in Las Cruces, working in nursing homes, diagnosing people with dementia. Then, her health changed. She didn’t know her multiple sclerosis would come with such a heavy dose of that same symptom.

It was 24 years ago when Levy, now 70 years of age, first learned she has MS. It has taken away her work, but in the more recent years, it threatened to take away her freedom. Levy was used to doing things for other people, but when you can’t do simple things for yourself, you can’t help others.

“I treated lots of patients, so I saw it, but they were in nursing homes,” Levy said in discussing her observations of what dementia does to people. “They’ve lost their homes and stuff. I can still live at home. I didn't expect dementia to be this. It changes your personality.”

MS is a condition that affects the brain and spinal cord. Symptoms can be different for each person and may come and go, especially early on. Common symptoms include fatigue, muscle weakness, balance and coordination problems, vision issues, and difficulty walking. They can also include muscle spasm, pain, bladder problems, and memory issues.

Transportation

For Levy, getting to basic appointments and going grocery shopping became tests of will and survival. She loves to swim and now just getting to the pool is problematic.

“I went to the pool, and I hit a car driving into a space,” Levy said. “That's classic MS. I knew I'm not going to drive anymore, and I thought because I did it myself and nobody else had to do it wouldn't be a big deal. I took off to visit my friend in Boston for six weeks. When I came home, the car wasn't there. I got rid of it. Then I said, ‘Okay, I can't do an errand. How am I going to get my manicure?’”

Levy has always loved cycling. It had been a major mode of transportation when she was living in Massachusetts, so she bought a bike as her new form of transportation.

“I went to the bicycle shop and they see a relatively healthy-looking person and they sell me a tricycle,” Levy said. “I can't use it. I tried to ride on the streets of Las Cruces and I couldn't drive it. I couldn't do it. I couldn't get it up the hill. And I realize, ‘What am I going to do? I'm stuck here.’ Meanwhile, I'm organizing everything. I've gone through every screw in the house.”

Then, Levy saw a newspaper story about Everybody Rides with Grace, a local non-profit connected to Velo Cruces, whose mission is to make Las Cruces more accessible to bikes and to make the city more walkable. EBRWG provides adaptive cycles to individuals with disabilities in our community.  She reached out and contacted its director, Andrea Holquin. Then help came and so did freedom.

“I connected Celinda with Donald Wilson, our current president of Velo Cruces, who also runs the Hub, a bike shop that offers free and low-cost bike repairs and gives bikes away to those in need,” Holguin said. “Donald connected Celinda with Joe Flores, who runs The Bike Studio. The story that followed is a testament of human kindness and deep gratitude.”

Holquin notes that disability can be very isolating and has proven to be just that for Levy. That was heightened during the holiday season because Levy is also Jewish, so while she celebrates Hanukkah, everyone around her is caught up in the Christmas season.

In reaching out to Holguin, Levy was clear that it wasn’t a grant she needed, it was help with making the tricycle she had purchased work for her.

“I didn't have any help,” she says she told Holguin. “I'm disabled and nobody can see my disability, and nobody can help me."

Holguin contacted Wilson, who happens to know Levy from their work together in the nursing homes years before. He brought in Flores.

“This man comes over and provides better home health than I've ever had for the last five years,” she said. “Joe comes in and he says this isn't going to work. He told me not to worry about it and took me to the bike shop to return it. He put it in his truck and he stayed with me. I can't remember my phone number. I get lost so he stayed with me.”

Flores told her exactly what she needed to purchase instead, then, after she bought that tricycle, he went to her house and assembled it.

“He came back the next day,” Levy said. “He showed me how to ride it. He adjusted it. He came back another day and adjusted it, and it's perfect. For me, it's a Hanukkah miracle.”

Faith and the miracle

Judaism was all Levy knew until she was 18 years old. She was raised in a faith that is largely misunderstood.

Living with MS means navigating an unpredictable body, one that does not always respond to effort or will. For a Jewish woman, this can echo an inherited awareness that survival has often required endurance without visibility. Asking for help has not always been safe; weakness has historically been used as justification for exclusion. That legacy can make illness feel not just personal, but historical.

At the same time, Jewish history is also a record of persistence. Communities survived not because they were untouched by suffering, but because they learned how to live alongside it. That inheritance shapes how Levy understands her own struggle—not as a failure of the body, but as part of a long human story of adapting to loss, uncertainty, and change.

“I'm a Jew, and it is all the way through me,” Levy said in describing the source of her faith. “It is the sparkle in my eye. It's the knowledge that generations and generations survived, and if all of my ancestors could survive, I can survive this horrible disease that took away my brain and my work and my everything and still maintain something.”

That’s why Holguin, Wilson, and Flores are miracle workers in her heart and mind.

It wasn’t easy for Levy even with the bike. The first time she ventured out on Missouri Avenue, she froze and had to return home. People who pass by see her as confused, so she put a disabled flag, and another that asks for patience, on the back of her bicycle to help them understand she has an invisible disability.

Now, her bike is her freedom. It’s her escape from the four walls of her home and the little paradise she has created in her garage. She and her dog, Babs, are no longer homebound.

“I can move from all the way there to all the way there,” she said. “I'm free. It's my freedom. Otherwise, I'm stuck here. This is an amazing garage I put together in the last six weeks, but who wants to be homebound? That’s what the trek symbolizes to me. It's my freedom.”

Her other freedom comes in the pool. She loves the aquatics center and the rehabilitation it provides.  

“That feeling of invincibility, I don't have it anymore for anything and it's not fun but I'm walking when I could be I expected to be a wheelchair,” Levy said. “Babs loves the bike. It’s me and it’s Babs.”