Company comes together to clear man's path to work

GARDNER, Kan. - Local tech support consultant Michael Wright had a pretty good excuse for not coming in to work Friday morning.

"We live in a cul-de-sac that's one of the last areas to get plowed," Wright explained. The president of the company he works for, Associates Solutions Inc., even told him he could stay home.

"I said, 'you know you don't have to come in,' and he said, 'I'm getting a little cabin fever here,'" Terrie Johnson recalled.

A trip through the snow is a bit more complicated for Wright, who lost his right leg after getting diagnosed with osteosarcoma three years ago.

A form of cancer that primarily affects children, osteosarcoma is very rare in adults. It started out in Wright's leg.

"My leg broke, they amputated my leg, then one year later it metastasized into my lungs," he said. "Now I'm fighting 30 some tumors in my lungs."

When Wright is home from treatment and feeling healthy, he refuses to let a little snow -- well a lot of snow -- get in his way.

"Fighting cancer is to get up and go to work and keep going and pushing myself," he explained, adding that he's also fighting to provide for his four daughters.

But Wright couldn't get out of his driveway Friday morning, so Johnson drove from her home in Lenexa to pick him up in Gardner and take him to work.

When they arrived at their Lenexa office, the company's general manager was shoveling the sidewalk so Wright could make it inside with his crutches.

"I love the people that I work with," Wright said. "I want to work for them for as long as I can, and as hard as I can."

So on a day when most people would've rather stayed home from work, he fought to make it in -- with a little help from the higher ups.

"It means the world to me," he said.