Meet the gunshot survivors who are healing through wheelchair basketball with the Chicago Hornets

This story was originally published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.

It happens every summer. As the heat rolls in, Juan Ortiz sees more and more shootings on the news in Chicago. But where some might see hopelessness, Ortiz sees an opportunity for connection. He thinks to himself: "I'm gonna meet a couple of those people. Those are potential teammates."

Ortiz is a member of the Chicago Hornets, a wheelchair basketball team. 

"It's sad, but every year there's new players," he said. 

He estimated that nearly three quarters of the Hornets — himself included — started using wheelchairs because they were shot.

On an evening in late March, the basketball players zoomed across the court during a crucial practice session: The team was on the cusp of qualifying for the Division 3 National Championship Series for the National Wheelchair Basketball Association for the first time in a decade. But they were missing one shot after the next. 

"You knuckleheads, be guards already," their coach, Jorge Alfaro, chided them

Alfaro wasn't the only one keeping an eye on the players. At the edge of the court, a television crew was filming them for the third and final installment of "Miracle Shots," an award-winning series CBS News Chicago produced in partnership with The Trace. 

"You're going to be on television with those shots and misses," Alfaro teased. "That's forever."

CBS News Chicago investigative producer Samah Assad centered the episode on the Hornets because they gave her hope. 

"Getting to know these players was really, really rewarding because their stories are just so powerful. … It is about who they are and who they've become since they were shot, how they've leaned on this team for recovery and healing," she said. "It isn't often that their community is highlighted, that disabled athletes are written about or reported on." 

Community-based programs often turn to sports as a means to prevent violence, but in cases where prevention fails, athletics can also offer gunshot survivors a way to heal. Research shows that adaptive sports have physical and psychosocial benefits. A recent study out of South Africa found that sports can help people with spinal cord injuries better reintegrate into their communities. In the U.S., gunshot wounds are the third leading cause of such injuries.

The Hornets say sports help gun violence survivors adapt to and live with paralysis precisely because of the structure and community they provide. And Ortiz's and Alfaro's relationship with each other — and with the young players they now mentor — shows how recovery can permeate entire communities of survivors.

When Jorge Alfaro was 10, he joined a group of kids playing with a gun. As he walked away, a bullet that had been accidentally discharged hit him in the back. It left him with a spinal cord injury, unable to walk. For the next chapter of his life, he said, a ping-pong blowing contest was the full extent of his athleticism. 

Five years after Alfaro was shot, he started playing wheelchair basketball through a program run by a hospital that's now known as the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, which co-sponsors the Hornets along with the Chicago Park District.

"I felt like a caveman looking at fire for the first time," Alfaro says of his first experience with wheelchair basketball. "These are like normal disabled kids, you know, being normal."

Because Alfaro was shot at such a young age, he hadn't taken stock of what his body could do before. He surprised himself with the way he developed strength, transferring himself from floor to chair; rolling himself from home to Lake Michigan when buses weren't accessible enough to take him there. Basketball built his confidence, opened his world, and introduced him to job opportunities and his ex-wife, an intern at the wheelchair basketball program. 

"I felt great in my skin," he said. "I felt tough, I felt sexy, I felt beautiful."

He soon found himself informally coaching and training players on a high school team, as well as the adult team that would become the Hornets. 

To Alfaro, coaching is a fragile enterprise. 

"I'm a straight shooter, but I'm also not demeaning," he said. "I'm not one of these guys that every little good thing they do, I'm going to give them a blue ribbon and some chocolate cookies."

"I'm not going to give you a cookie because you cross the street, but if I see you cross the street and save a life and help a kid and somebody else learn something above and beyond, here's your cookie," he added.

The first thing Juan Ortiz, too, enjoyed doing in a wheelchair was playing sports. Ortiz was shot while he was walking with a friend on February 9, 1998, when he was 14. Before his injury, he thought he would be the next "Tony Montana … the next kingpin of Chicago." His shooting made him realize he wasn't indestructible. He'd thought he would follow his father's path restoring cars, but losing his ability to walk snuffed out that possibility. After rehab, Ortiz moved in with his father, who had to carry him up 13 steps. His mother found a more accessible apartment, and Ortiz got a chair that helped him shower.

Then someone in his high school said he looked like he could play basketball. At first, Ortiz thought it was a joke. Then he brought Ortiz to the gym. 

"It started with a couple of shots," Ortiz said, and it quickly became clear that he could hoop. The person who brought him to the gym was excited to find a shooter, and told him about wheelchair basketball. They started scrimmaging during lunch; Ortiz joined his high school team, and the team grew. 

Alfaro was a coach for the high school team, aged 40 to Ortiz's 14. During Ortiz's sophomore year, he was named the MVP. Ortiz also joined the adult men's team that Alfaro was coaching. That same year, Ortiz was Rookie of the Year on the adult team.

Ortiz's affinity for the game got him noticed by coaches for wheelchair teams at the University of Illinois. But he had no aspirations of going to college, and in his junior year, he dropped out of high school. 

"I just live on Social Security, I'm going to be a knucklehead," he said. "I found subsidized housing. I lived with a roommate, and we paid like $100 a month. It was in a terrible neighborhood." 

He kept playing on the adult team.

Alfaro spoke to Ortiz's mom, who was worried about her son's future. Don't panic, he told her; he'll get his GED. 

After years of being broke, when Ortiz was 22, he finally listened to Alfaro and the recruiters. He completed his GED and enrolled in college. 

Alfaro says he was relieved to help set Ortiz on the right path. Since then, the two have swapped roles, moving from coach and mentee to teammates more than once. Alfaro once hired Ortiz at his medical sales company. They celebrated a milestone in another sport, too: They were inducted into the USA Wheelchair Softball Hall of Fame a few years apart after turning double plays as shortstop and second baseman. 

After college, Ortiz pursued his master's degree. Now, he works as an IT director, and lives the suburban life of his dreams: married, with three kids, and gainfully employed. He still wishes he could walk — he feels the sting of being unable to ride bikes with his kids — but he's proud of where he landed.

"What's the alternative, 30 years of being on the streets?" he said. Before he was shot, he would hang out with about 25 people. "There's three of us still alive right now."

Alfaro has a different relationship with his shooting, because it happened so early in his life. He doesn't reflect on it as much, but when he does, he arrives at a place of gratitude. People often ask him, if he could turn back time, wouldn't he have stayed home that day? He says, no; he would do it all over again. 

"I believe I affected enough lives in my life to make a difference in their lives, and I would hate to think where they would be if I wasn't there," he said. Without his shooting, he would not have been in wheelchair sports, met his mentor, found his ex-wife. His son would not have been born.

In other words: "I would not duck. I would not dodge that bullet."

Alfaro recently called me from a hospital, where he had just spoken to two patients — one who had been shot, and another who'd been in an ATV accident. "I'm not a case manager," he said. "My thing is to get you to take the first step forward in a different direction."

Just like violence prevention organizations use credible messengers to prevent violence, Alfaro thinks hospitals need to deploy credible messengers like himself: survivors who can truly empathize with someone who lost the ability to walk. "When a crippled guy talks, they listen," he said. "The gang banger, the lord of the streets comes back to tell people, 'I got shot because of this, and this is where I am today.' Let him be the beacon of hope. It looks better than the lawyer that got shot accidentally in a hunting accident."

He tells them to try sports to socialize, to talk to other people with disabilities. "There's something other than retaliation or gang life," Alfaro said. "You have to push somebody, or else he's just gonna soak in regret and vengeance. ... You gotta tell them, there's something else, brother."

Alfaro became the official Hornets coach two years ago, after the Hornets merged with the Skyhawks, another team sponsored by Shirley Ryan and the Park District; the Skyhawks are now a team for newcomers. And as coach, one thing he's responsible for is finding new players through watching the news, scanning social media, and keeping an eye on YouTube.

The violence of the summer always brings new recruits. Once, Ortiz recruited a player after watching a YouTube video of their being shot at a night club.

The Hornets' makeup of gunshot survivors, Ortiz said, is a trait he's noticed the group shares with other big-city teams in the NWBA. 

That fact comes into stark relief when the Hornets play an international team. "There's maybe one guy on that team a long time ago that was paralyzed from being shot. Nobody else," he said. "Literally eight out of 10 players for us are gunshot victims."

Alfaro and Ortiz now work together to mentor younger players. Ortiz said, "I don't want to be the only guy with a job."

The Hornets eventually made the nationals, but they had to call out because of team members' basketball injuries or conflicts with their jobs. It broke Alfaro's heart, and he relived the fulfillment and collapse of his dreams when he watched the "Miracle Shots" documentary. 

"Our season ended very disheartening," he said. "I have to reengage, recalibrate, and that's what it is, that's what life is all about."

Alfaro still feels most at home in the gym. When he's not there, he enjoys spending time with his chihuahua, Nemo, and he's working on mending his relationship with his son.

In between basketball seasons, Ortiz is learning pickleball. He's concerned with his legacy: On the anniversary of his shooting, he asks where he wants to be, and if people will remember him in 100 years. That reflection, along with some trauma therapy, led him to tell his story. He also started a podcast, called Chicago Grit, to share the true stories of other people like himself.

The first person he interviewed was Jorge Alfaro.