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LaQuality of Life by Design
January 17, 2010
By Lydia Garcia
 Kenny LaCome is not your average person. He is better than average. A native Taoseño, his father was born in Questa and his mother was born in Valdez. LaCome was born at Altus Air Force Base, Oklahoma, but grew up spending most of his life in Taos. By the age of 10, LaCome was a common sight downtown, delivering newspapers, removing ice, cleaning windows and doing any odd job that could help him purchase his first bicycle. By age 13, he was racing motocross and, when he reached adulthood, was skiing in tournaments as well as motocross and street motorcycle racing, while also working as a motorcycle mechanic.
One fateful day in 1983, LaCome was in his fifth motorcycle race of the day when an accident left him a paraplegic. It was not long after that LaCome was riding an adapted motorcycle. LaCome began looking at the sit skis developed at that time and could easily see how the designs could be improved. Within three years, LaCome won his first national adaptive skiing championship and was building himself his own device for alpine skiing.
As a motorcycle racer and mechanic, LeCome could see what the other makers of sit skis could not see: the sit ski needed suspension. Some of the best inventions of the ages came from one individual who could see beyond the vision of others.
Woody Witte, LaCome’s employer while he was working as a motorcycle mechanic, told LaCome that he had no interest in developing such a device but that LaCome was free to use his tools and shop to build it. As LaCome got about 90 percent finished, Witte showed him a design that improved the loading system, but he failed to tell LaCome that he had copied the design from someone else. A few years later, Rick Isom, the original designer, approached LaCome at a ski camp for the United States Adaptive Ski Team and told him he had copied his design. LaCome let him know that, while he had been the one to build it, it was designed by someone else.
LaCome now had a sit ski but needed a set of outriggers to help him maneuver. He had seen a brochure and eventually called designer Ed Pauls to ask if he could duplicate a set for his personal use. Pauls told him that, “It is interesting you ask; my Nordic Track business has taken off and I don’t have time for both,” recounts LaCome.
Pauls told LaCome that if he would set up a non-profit business, he would assign the outrigger business to him. Through researching how to set up a business, an acquaintance told LaCome about the The Community Resource Center in Denver, Colorado. The non-profit was doing economic development for non-profit organizations. Ultimately, the Community Resource Center became the pass-through that Pauls was looking for to give LaCome the outrigger patent. Witte convinced LaCome to run the business together and formed Team Spirit. Before too long, LaCome was selling a few sit skis for other skiers and participating in alpine ski events. Unknown to LaCome, Witte took the outrigger design, changed the material, ran off with the business and left LaCome in the dust.
LaCome relocated back to Taos and decided to pursue his new sit ski design in 1993. He built the first prototype in 1994. “After all of these years and drama that I went through, I actually came up with the design I had originally thought about in 1986.”
“I met a patent attorney and was given a patent for my suspension system in March of 2000,” LaCome explains, regarding his idea of adding suspension like those in motorcycles. LaCome adds, “A friend nicknamed me “LaQuality” because I am determined to make the best product that I can.” LaCome searched for the perfect seat and again found himself dissatisfied with inconsistent quality of the product. Through a mutual friend, he met someone in Albuquerque who has been teaching him to make the seat he envisions into a reality.
In the same fashion that I have always enjoyed seeing the studio of an artist, so too was the case when Taos Horse Fly got the tour of LaCome’s shop. Viewing where a dynamic mind is envisioning something that previously did not exist is much like getting a glimpse behind the artist’s eyes. Well thought out and ordered, his father’s woodworking shop has been converted by LaCome into his own domain. State-of-the-art power tools stood amidst shop cabinets and furniture made by his dad.
LaCome has several frames ready for the new seat design. He showed Taos Horse Fly his seat prototype and his sit skis for alpine and cross-country, as well as a wheeled version for training that just plain looks like fun. Standing in his shop and taking in the glimpses of inventive determination, tools and ski parts, it is easy to see that LaCome is completely in his element and does not let much stop him.
In the midst of all of this positive strength, LaCome has been sidetracked by learning how to take more responsibility in his nutrition and health, assuming responsibility for water rights in Questa that were inherited through his father, Elmer, and his grandparents, Marina and Augustine LaCome. LaCome actively participates in adaptive skiing all over the world. Since his accident, he has also taken part in wheelchair tennis, basketball and kayaking on the Rio Grande.
LaCome recently placed 6th in the U.S. National Cross Country Championships in Anchorage, Alaska (January 2-7) and is planning to compete in the World Cup in France January 28-31, 2010.
The next morning, Taos Horse Fly met up with LaCome to see how his sit ski works. In the freshly fallen snow, he loaded his sit ski into his four-wheel-drive truck that he had modified himself—first loading himself and then taking one wheel off the chair and having it loaded in minutes as well. LaCome drove us up near Cabresto Lake. Finding an area of freshly fallen snow, LaCome got into the sit ski and took off. As he whizzed past me, the smile on his face said it all: LaCome is completely at home flying on a device that he made with his own two hands; one that removes any doubt or speculation of his abilities.
After a few demo runs captured in photos, we reloaded into the truck and LaCome shyly smiled, “When I am on the ski and moving through the snow, I feel free of everything.”
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