Sam Dean |The Roanoke Times

Ashley Roberts enjoys water-skiing for the first time Friday at LEAP into Life Outdoor Adventure Day at Smith Mountain Lake.

Jacob Tyree serves during a tennis match.

Shamal Battice learns scuba diving.

Robin Clark (left) and Mike Deane coach Mark Seidell through crossbow shooting at the Smith Mountain Lake 4-H center in Franklin County.

David Loy (left) and Doug Rohr help Terri Bsullak celebrate her successful first attempt at water-skiing on Friday.

Joe Ray says he's in the business of changing lives.

The paraplegic does so by teaching people with disabilities how to water ski and was hoping to change a few lives yesterday at an all-day camp for disabled adults at Smith Mountain Lake.

"I ain't lost nobody yet so I'm not going to lose you," Ray assured his first student, Raven Barkley, 23, who has been wheelchair-bound her whole life.

Eighteen paraplegics, quadriplegics and other people with disabilities participated in the second annual "LEAP Into Life Outdoor Adventure Day." They included people who are disabled because of cerebral palsy, head injuries, spinal tumors, car accidents and gunshot wounds. Amie Trinca, the event's coordinator, started Leisure Experiences for Active People while interning at the Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center in Fishersville more than 30 years ago.

The event was organized to allow participants to undertake potentially risky activities that require expensive, specialized equipment while also ensuring their safety.

Participants enjoyed activities such as scuba, wheelchair tennis, water-skiing, fishing, kayaking, crossbow, scrapbook making, four-wheeling and riding personal watercraft. Trinca said it is the only camp she knows of in Virginia that offers all of these activities at one place.

Fifty-four volunteers, including many medical professionals, came from various facilities, including Woodrow Wilson. Augusta Medical Center sponsored the event and provided $2 million in insurance for the day's activities, Trinca said.

Disabled instructors such as Ray, a top-ranked sit-skier, and Bob Barnaby, a top-ranked wheelchair tennis player, also helped.

Ray started water-skiing at a similar camp after he was injured in a car wreck at age 20 in 1978. He wanted to do it as much as possible, and so he started to teach adaptive water-skiing. Over the years, he has taught a variety of people, from a disabled 3-year-old to soldiers injured in Iraq.

Still, Ray said the experience is about much more than the sport.

"It was really about individuals like me who discovered that they could do more than they thought they could," Ray said. "If I could turn back the hands of time, I'd still be sitting here," Ray said as he tapped his wheelchair.

Margie Bird said that having instructors with disabilities really makes a difference. She said it has inspired Barkley, her daughter, to venture out of her comfort zone.

Trinca became motivated to help people with disabilities after she was in a wheelchair for a year when she was 6. The experience taught her compassion for people who are disabled and made her appreciate the struggles they face to do simple tasks.

The outdoor adventure camp is one of many programs that LEAP does. It also puts on monthly activities that have included everything from a Caribbean cruise to whale watching at Virginia Beach and snow-skiing in the Shenandoah Valley.

Trinca described the need to see beyond one's problems and the limitations one faces.

Her eyes teared up when she described her husband, Butch Trinca, as a paraplegic adrenaline junkie who single-man kayaked on the New River and bungee-jumped. During the last six months of his life, he became addicted to cocaine. He shot himself three years ago to the day before Friday's event.

"He taught me to live life to the fullest," Trinca said. She said that events like Friday's help people to do just that.

"You have to look up and see the positive," Trinca said. "Life is so short."