ONE BUSY AFTERNOON during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Greg Hallstrom received a call at his Albuquerque office. A young man had been injured in a tragic car accident that required the amputation of both his legs. He had been stuck at home, dependent on his frail 70-year-old father. To get anywhere, the man’s father would first carry the wheelchair down the stairs, then hoist his son on his back and carry him out, and later, back in again.
“He was stuck,” Hallstrom says. “He couldn’t get to a job, couldn’t get to the doctor, couldn’t get to physical therapy. Meanwhile, the old man was wearing down.”
Hallstrom assembled a dozen volunteers and quickly designed and built a wooden ramp at the man’s home. “We keep it simple,” Hallstrom says. “That ramp gave freedom to the son and a break for the father. Every ramp has its story.”
Founded by Hallstrom in 2019, the New Mexico Ramp Project provides free ramps for people with mobility issues in more than 15 counties and tribal homelands across New Mexico. The nonprofit has organized more than 30 building teams and 500 volunteers and part-time staff across the state.
Utilizing salvage wood from construction sites, donations, or deep discounts from companies like Hilti tools and Simpson Strong-Tie, Hallstrom has developed several strategically located prefabrication shops where volunteers design and construct the frames that support the ramps.
Hallstrom looks to grow the operation to all 33 New Mexico counties while taking the time to ensure each team is well-established and supplied.
An estimated 288,000 New Mexicans deal with some sort of mobility issue, a number that is only expected to increase as New Mexico’s population ages. To meet this demand, the New Mexico Ramp Project has built more than 400 ramps. An additional 286 people remain on a waiting list, many of them in remote areas of Harding and other rural counties.
Albuquerque resident Sara Trice has struggled with severe chronic leg pain for more than 15 years. Simply navigating the steps to her house would be so exhausting, it took hours to recover, so she never left—until the New Mexico Ramp Project came to her rescue in July 2022. “The ramp they put in for me changed my life,” she says. “It’s just awesome. These people are a gift to our state.”
Hallstrom says his faith led him to this work. After his second retirement from the University of New Mexico, he looked around, seeking a way to be of service. “The mental and emotional trauma of isolation is deadly,” Hallstrom says. “When you see people reunited like that, you know you’re doing right—and I’m in it for the long haul.”
Hallstrom looks to grow the operation to all 33 New Mexico counties while taking the time to ensure each team is well-established and supplied. The organization receives several offers a week from volunteers from all over the country who want to come to New Mexico and help. But the Ramp Project has no place to host the volunteers. Hallstrom would like to build a fabrication facility in Albuquerque with a housing component.
“I’m just a little cog in this thing,” Hallstrom says. “It’s the team members who are the heroes.”
Read more: After a series of tragedies in Taos, a commercial airline pilot changed his life to meet a community need.
