BLOOMINGTON - Kevin Schaefer - a busy businessman, husband and father - is getting the new set of wheels that he's needed for years, thanks to the generosity of hundreds of people in Central Illinois.

Since an Oct. 27 fundraiser, more than $35,000 has been donated for Schaefer for a new power wheelchair through a special fund at his church, St. Luke Union Church, Bloomington.

"It has been absolutely overwhelming," Schaefer, who is paralyzed from the upper chest down, said. "It (the fundraiser) was one of those moments in life that you don't feel that often. We felt an outpouring from all sorts of people."

St. Luke's interim pastor, the Rev. Beth Wagner, said "I think everybody understood that this was an amazing young man and we needed to do everything to support him."

The donations allowed Schaefer late last week to order an iBOT wheelchair. The chair - made by Independence Technology, a division of Johnson & Johnson - will allow the 42-year-old Downs man to be in an upright position from time to time, to navigate through sand and loose soil and to climb curbs and even some stairs.

The "standing function" will reduce the risk of potentially fatal complications from pressure sores on his backside, as well as allow him to be eye-to-eye with other people, including colleagues and customers at his Web development and computer networking business, Ctech in Bloomington.

The improved navigation and climbing functions will give him access to businesses that he can't get into now and will allow him to join his son, Carson, on his Cub Scout trips.

The iBOT will be delivered in three to six weeks to a rehabilitation center in St. Louis, where Schaefer will be further trained on the iBOT before he's allowed to take it home.

Schaefer has been using the same power wheelchair that he purchased shortly after the 1991 swimming pool accident that resulted in his spinal cord injury.

After he developed a pressure sore that wouldn't heal on his backside, following a fall last spring, a doctor who worked with Schaefer on therapy and wound care recommended a wheelchair with a standing function to reduce the risk of another pressure sore, to get exercise and to assist in digestion. But Schaefer's efforts to buy a new wheelchair were slowed when representatives of Medicare, of his insurer Health Alliance, and of wheelchair manufacturers wouldn't tell him how much Medicare would pay for the wheelchair. So Schaefer didn't know how much he and his wife, Becca, would have to kick in.

Church members helped with the fundraiser. The office of U.S. Rep. Tim Johnson, an Urbana Republican, helped by putting Schaefer in touch with a Medicare representative who told Schaefer that, for a $26,000 iBOT, Medicare and Health Alliance combined would pay $6,000.

Thanks to the fundraiser, Schaefer can cover the remaining $20,000. As for the $15,000 balance from the fundraising, Schaefer and fundraiser organizers will decide how the money will be used, Wagner said.