A cup of Joe before you go CAOT professor volunteers at Mammoth Lakes with Disabled Sports Eastern Sierra

Mammoth Mountain is the place where Pierce instructor Joe Perret and his wife Nina met, fell in love and got engaged. But after an injury to Nina’s back led her to stop skiing, Joe no longer had a partner in the snow.

Disabled Sports Eastern Sierra (DSES) was able to get him back on the slopes with others. It also provided him with the ability to help people who may have never thought they would be off stable ground.

Perret has been instructing with DSES for about 10 years.

“It combines some of the things I really love,” Perret said. “I love the mountains. I love to ski. I love to teach—you put it all together and that’s what I do.”

DSES is an organization that aims to make sports affordable and accessible to people with disabilities. Adaptive equipment is used to enable people to participate in winter and summer activities.

“We have given them a section of their life back,” Perret said. “They lost the recreational part of their life, and they now have a feeling of accomplishment that, if they can do this, they can do anything.”

Executive Director Kathy Copeland founded DSES in 2003. She said there was a need for a separate disabled sports program at Mammoth Lakes.

She said the organization is all- inclusive. Any disability, age, or gender—they can get them out on the hill.

DSES instructs more than 400 students, offering over 3,500 lessons a year. According to DSES staff, about 23 percent of students are people on the autism spectrum, and about 20 percent are people who have suffered a traumatic physical injury.

“It’s an equalizer,” Copeland said. “People come up here in their wheelchairs; They are used to being on the pavement, and then all of the sudden, they have the world opened up to them.”

Perret said that instructing his students at Mammoth provides similar rewards to teaching at Pierce.

“The biggest thrill is when it clicks. When suddenly, they get it, and they get that look on their face,” Perret said. “You get the same thing in the classroom. That’s why I enjoy teaching.”

Perret said that being a volunteer instructor for DSES has taught him to be more patient. And, in the long term,