Source: Paul Bradbury / Getty
On May 15th, a guy named Erik Weber discovered that he passed the law bar.
Erik was the first student with autism to graduate from Cal Western School of Law and it appears like he’s also the first to pass the bar exam too.
“When I first opened it up on May 15th, I closed it down and checked it again to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating,” Erik said. “When I found out, I really did pass my keyboard got wet with tears of joy.”
When Erik was 5 years old, the Dr.’s told his parents to institutional their son for the rest of his life because of his autism diagnoses.
Luckily, Sandi Weber, Erik’s mom, refused the listen to the Dr’s and do as they suggested about institutionalizing their son.
“You have to grieve the loss of the perfect child. What you thought you were going to have, is not going to be the same,” she said.
When Erik was first diagnosed as a toddler, the information out there was slim so Sandi had her own ways of helping out her son.
Sandi decided to videotape Erik’s behavior and used it as a teaching tool to show him visual learning.
There were other ways that Sandi helped her son out too.
At the time, Sandi was campaigning for Councilwoman Marti Emerald and she took Erik door-to-door with her to do her work.
This work was another lesson in order to teach Erik about facial expressions and first impressions of people’s reactions.
Later on, Erik was enrolled into the Special Olympics to help teach him confidence, give him a chance to meet friends and to build his strength.
Erik has plans to practice in special education law, he said, “I got into it because I wanted to help other people with special needs, other people like me.”
He’s started helping special needs people already, he’s written a paper about group homes that house these special needs people.
“Two thirds of them in Southern California are below standards on how they treat the residents in group homes,” he said. “The oversight is not there.”
Via:nbcsandiego.com
