Every day, Chris Hohmann joins the thousands of UCLA students and faculty who make the daily trudge up the steepest incline on Bruin Walk, from Pauley Pavilion to Charles E. Young Drive.
When Hohmann gets to the top, though, he turns around and goes back down the hill. On a regular day he will travel up and down Bruin Walk 10 times just for a workout ““ and in a wheelchair.
“I’m inside and I stare at a screen all day, so any chance I get to be outside is nice,” he said. “The hill (on Bruin Walk) has the steepest incline I think anywhere on campus.”
Hohmann, 36, has been making his pilgrimage up and down Bruin Walk since October of 2008.
He came to UCLA in 2002, and has been working as a programmer analyst for the department of surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine since then.
“He’s just a great guy,” said Harold Owens, director of Information Technology at the David Geffen School of Medicine. “He’s that rare IT guy that doesn’t just use jargon. When the junior level IT guys need help, he’s the one they go to.”
Hohmann’s journey to UCLA has been an uphill climb.
A former MIT student, he has been in a wheelchair since 1993. He lost his right leg from the kneecap down after jumping five stories from the roof of his fraternity house in a suicide attempt.
He was a 20-year-old computer sciences student at the time. “For a while I couldn’t drink anything but water, so the first time I had orange juice I remember that as being a big deal,” he said. “And then once I was out of the hospital I would realize the things I would have missed, like when “˜Lord of the Rings’ came out, little things like that.”
After spending a little less than a year in the hospital and another year in rehab, Hohmann was left without most of his right leg and had lingering back problems that made it difficult for him to travel more than a short distance without a wheelchair.
“The problem with an injury to the spinal cord is that nerves will grow back, but they grow back at a very slow rate,” he said.
After rehab, Hohmann started his own consulting firm and had just finished doing work for Citigroup when his brother, who is also employed by UCLA, convinced him to move to Los Angeles.
Since coming to the university, Hohmann has tried to take advantage of all the opportunities afforded to students and staff, including the dining hall system, special lectures and the two-dollar movie nights.
“There’s always something to do at UCLA,” he said. “The campus has a lot to offer, and I enjoy spending time here outside work.”
During his first encounter, what stood out to Hohmann about the hill was its intimidating slope.
“I remember my first time going down that hill and it was way too steep,” Hohmann said. “I didn’t belong on that hill and I wanted to overcome that.”
Initially, Hohmann couldn’t take the hill straight on ““ rather he would zigzag across the hill to moderate the steep incline.
In the beginning, he was also overwhelmed by students offering to give him a push, but eventually people began to recognize that he was there for a purpose, he said.
Of course, when the class of 2013 arrived this fall, students again began to take notice of him.
“Every year I could tell who the freshmen were,” Hohmann said with a smile. “As people started seeing me every day, they recognized I was doing it for exercise.”
Erik Dietz, a first-year political science student, offered a helping hand to Hohmann when he first saw him.
“Now whenever I see him out there in the sun or the rain I’m just kind of amazed,” Dietz said.
Hohmann said he has gotten stronger over time.
At one point, he tried adding a new challenge to his workout by strapping a 50-pound weight to the back of his chair. He eventually decided to forego the extra weight when he realized the potential danger it presented to those around him.
“(The weight) fell off once and I was lucky it didn’t start rolling down the hill,” Hohmann said. “When I first bought it I remember dropping it from the counter. It missed my foot by inches, but I had misjudged how heavy it was.”
Besides seeing him on the hill each afternoon, students might also recognize Hohmann as a frequent patron of De Neve dining hall.
“I didn’t know that (UCLA) staff could eat at the dining halls until I had been working here for about a year,” he said.
Hohmann, who drives a car with modified pedals from his home in Koreatown to campus each day, eats at the dining halls because he said he likes the food.
“It depends on what the menu is, so if there’s something in particular at Covel, I go there. But I like (De Neve’s) menu best; they always have the grilled chicken here,” he said. “It seems this year they have a lot of new stuff, like the new trail mix bar.”
Although Hohmann insists he’s just an average guy, he says the most memorable moments he has had during his workouts have been when students have told him that he is a source of inspiration. He also said he finds himself inspired by friendly passersby.
“I really do appreciate when people ask if I need any help,” Hohmann said. “It’s hard to have a bad day when your faith in humanity is being restored. I can always count on that happening during the course of the day.”