A motorcycle accident 19 years ago restricted Dave Lewis's mobility but swung open the door to a business opportunity for the now 39-year-old entrepreneur.

Lewis was driving home from his job managing a rental equipment store in LaPorte when he hit a hole on a set of railroad tracks and was thrown into an 8-foot ditch.

The impact crushed a vertebra and his spinal cord, paralyzing Lewis from the chest down.

In the hour before help arrived on the late June day, Lewis had time to assess his injuries.

"I just knew that my back was not right," he said.

A four-month recovery, including time at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, prepared him to return to Purdue North Central, where he'd been a student before the accident.

But after earning a degree in business, "I wasn't sure what I was going to do," Lewis said.

He tried selling insurance, but found it wasn't for him.

Always mechanically inclined and possessing a "go-getter attitude," he decided to take on an industry he thought could use improvement.

"I didn't like the service I was getting," when it came to a wheelchair and other equipment meant to improve his mobility, he said.

He opened Access Mobility Wheelchair Shop 15 years ago, selling and installing chairs, lifts, retrofitted vehicles and other equipment for people with disabilities, and making vehicle and home modifications to accommodate their disabilities.

"There was a need," Lewis said. "The market was there and there was nobody else doing it."

The business has grown by about 15 percent each year and built a customer base of more than 1,000, Lewis said.

Driving the growth has been Lewis's unique insight into his customers' needs, he said. "I know what they're going to need because I'm disabled myself."

Customers range from children with disabilities to stroke and heart attack victims.

Some of his customers are members of Lewis's Wheelchair Chicago Cubs softball team, which plays from June to August.

His business covers a range of physical hurdles, from retrofitting a vehicle chair lift to helping teammates fine-tune the chairs they use for softball -- all the elements that make it easier to get around.

"I didn't expect the business to go as well as it has," Lewis said. Being paralyzed "opened so many doors I would never have gone down," he said.

"It pushed me down the road God wanted me to go down."