The Ventura fifth-grader with cerebral palsy can't walk without help and spends most of his time in a wheelchair. But the smiling boy with a thousand questions became a long-distance trail runner in April.

And he has the documentary to prove it.

"Everyone Runs — The Story of Adaptive Athlete Shaun Wahl" premieres Wednesday with a screening at the Topa Topa Brewing Company in Ventura. Made to show nearly all barriers can be hurdled, the 20-minute film tells of how Shaun, with the help of a growing legion of friends and a rickshaw-on-wheels invented by his father, ran 11 miles in a Los Olivos race called Born to Adapt.

The journey to running began, as Shaun explained in a living room filled with mobility devices and Halloween decorations, with what he called "my back story."

"I was born two months early," he said, telling, with his mother's help, how his brain hemorrhaged shortly after birth, leaving him with quadriplegic cerebral palsy and a build-up of fluid in the brain called hydrocephalus. The conditions mean his brain isn't always in sync with the rest of his body.

"It's like not getting the messages of where my body wants to go," he said.

Now 10 and a student at Juanamaria Elementary School in Ventura, he has undergone nine surgeries, including three during the COVID-19 pandemic. He and his family take the operations and everything else that comes their way in stride, finding ways to adapt.

When the lockdown left them at home, restless and shut off from the world, Peter Wahl decided they needed mobility.

The electrical engineer carted home a frayed couch left with a "free" sign on a neighbor's lawn. He added motors and four wheels, turning the sofa into a chariot for his son. They journeyed up and down the sidewalks of Ventura, bumping down the wooden Ventura Pier on one trip and cruising through a fast food drive-through on another.

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Wahl turned two reclining chairs into vehicles and also modified Shaun's wheelchairs, using the gadgets as bridges to new adventures.

"We're doing the best we can to give him normal experiences," said Jennifer Wahl, Shaun's mother.

Later in the pandemic, Peter Wahl embarked on a new hobby: Backpacking. Shaun thought it sounded like fun.

"I wanted to be out with Daddy," he said.

Peter Wahl started tinkering with the base of a wheelchair, the seat bucket from a go-cart, hiking poles and two 24-inch tires. Over a weekend, he built what he calls his "Frankenmobile," a light-weight rickshaw that he could use to haul Shaun up and down trails.

The family hiked a beach in Carpinteria and trekked to the Cerro Gordo ghost town in the Inyo Mountains. Father and son spent a night with friends camping out in the hills far above Ojai.

The idea of using the rig as a trail-running device — sneakers on wheels — came from Leigh Scarber. She's a Ventura physical therapist who has worked with Shaun for four years and has become his buddy. When they meet, he tells her how he's doing and always asks about her 8-year-old son, Kai.

"He truly cares. He sees things that other people don’t," she said. "I feel like I know myself better as a result of knowing Shaun."

Scarber is a long-distance trail runner who planned to log 150 miles in a Born to Run event where ultramarathoners gather to run 10-mile loops for four days. She told the Wahls the event was expanding to include a race for adaptive athletes. Like Shaun.

"I said, 'Hey, look, I really think we should do this,'" she said.

The Wahls came to the event site at a private ranch near Los Olivos with the rickshaw and two mobile reclining chairs. They worried about being seen as outsiders, about the rickshaw breaking down, about turning Shaun into a spectacle.

Seven adaptive athletes lined up to run the mile-long course on a hillside trail. They included a woman who went through a stroke, a man born without a right leg and Shaun. He sat in the rickshaw in sunglasses, grinning from ear to ear. Scarber, there to pilot the rig, smiled just as broadly.

They ran — Shaun sitting and ringing a bell while Scarber pulled the rickshaw in a steady jog. Peter Wahl ran behind as a spotter, still worried about his Frankenmobile. Everything worked.

When Scarber finished her lap, another ultramarathoner stepped up to pull the rickshaw and another runner volunteered after that. Soon the athletes were lining up for a chance to run with Shaun.

The Wahls no longer felt like outsiders. Everyone was family.

"At that moment, no one had any disabilities," said Stan Otremba, a runner and produce company vice president from Santa Maria. "We were all just running and having fun."

Shaun rang his bell and called out "faster," chatting up everyone in earshot. When the three-hour race was over, he hugged Scarber, an award looped around his neck.

"I did it!" he yelled.

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Born to Adapt was created by Zach Friedley, a professional trail runner who races with a blade on his amputated right leg. He leads a Mendocino Movement Project that works to provide access to disabled athletes. He answered questions about Shaun in an email from Ecuador where he was preparing to summit the volcanic mountain Cotopaxi.

"Shaun is a bright light and I'm excited to see his journey unfold," he wrote. "He's my buddy for life."

Shaun's run was always more than a single event. Scarber calls it a movement. She's part of a nonprofit, Runners for Public Lands, created to build running communities that protect the environment. The group hired filmmaker Roy Culver to make the "Everyone Runs" documentary on Shaun as a way to show that challenges can be overcome.

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The group is starting an Everyone Runs scholarship that will be used to help people who are disabled or disadvantaged in another way achieve dreams as runners. The film's premiere on Wednesday will raise funds for the project and for Runners for Public Lands.

General admission tickets for adults are $18 and can be purchased online. A group run with Shaun will begin at 5:30 p.m. at Topa Topa, 4880 Colt St., Ventura. The program begins at 7 p.m. with doors opening at 6 p.m.

Scarber thinks the film will spur other people to emulate her friend and find ways to adapt and run.

"I think they're going to say, 'If Shaun is out there, I'm going to be out there,'" she said.

As for Shaun, he's planning for future Born to Adapt races.

"Every year," he said, laughing as he announced his goal to run even farther than he did this year. "From 11 (miles) maybe to 100."

Tom Kisken covers health care and other news for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tom.kisken@vcstar.com or 805-437-0255.

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