Remind MeIn March 2000, Rodney Anderson of South Central Los Angeles was on his way to the NBA and a degree in social work, thanks
to a full basketball scholarship from California State University at Fullerton (CSUF). On a rare day off from practice, he
came home to have dinner with his family. Afterwards, he went for a walk -- the last time he would do so. Gang members approached
Rodney and shot him in the back, thinking he was a rival gang member, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down, with little
movement in his arms.
With assistance from the state of California and former assemblyman Carl Washington, a contractor was hired to begin work
on the Anderson home to make it wheelchair-accessible for Rodney. But the contractor never returned to complete the job and
left gaping holes where there should have been walls, leaving the house exposed to the elements and making it almost completely
uninhabitable.
Rodney is an honor student at CSUF and attends classes and basketball games in a wheelchair. While Rodney and his fiancee
Monique, along with his parents, sister Glenda and her three children, Mellone, 19, Louis, 16 and 12-year-old Cordney, went
on vacation to the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, CSUF held a special campus event where Rodney's basketball
number was retired.
