TAMPA, Fla. — The Standup and Play Foundation is made up of people who donate their time to make standing therapy a reality for everyone who uses a wheelchair.

Through their Heroes Golf Therapy program, they give injured veterans, police, and firefighters the ability to try activities they thought were in the past.

After Karen Atkinson, a local veteran, was in a car accident, she wasn’t sure she would be able to do something like play golf again.

Thanks to access to a VertaCat, she can.

“It’s truly amazing,” Atkinson said. “It acts like a power chair but then puts you into a fully upright standing position in order to be able to take that golf swing.”

An Army veteran, Atkinson was in a car accident in 2014 and suffered a spinal cord injury, leaving her partially paralyzed.

Once Atkinson started getting out more, she didn’t know how active of a life she would be able to live.

“The few field trips that we took in rehab were to places like the mall or to a park,” she said. “I was able to still go and attend my children’s activities, but it was always just very difficult.”

Thanks to the Stand Up and Play Foundation, of which she’s a board member, she can golf as much as she wants.

“Everybody knows that there’s wheelchair basketball and wheelchair softball and I wanted to do something that would get me out of my chair,” she said.

The foundation provides adaptive golf equipment to disabled veterans, police, and firefighters.

Atkinson said she wants any veteran who wants a VertaCat to be able to have one and said the VA will even buy one if a veteran shows the desire to play.

“Devices like this and other adaptive sports are just amazing because they get my life off the pavement,” she said. “I’m not just somebody that’s sitting on the sidelines. I’m a participant.”

Atkinson started the Facebook group, Vet Going, to share all sorts of different adventure therapies with veterans like her.