Brad,
Thanks for sharing this news, please tell Vic how pleased and happy I am for 
him.
Virgie and Hoshi
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "MV" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2006 8:23 AM
Subject: Awesome sharing of news


Hello all,

Some of you may remember a brother from the list some time ago, Vic Llanes.
Aside from his wife battling and winning the fight with Thyroid cancer
fairly recently. They were up for candidates of a TV show called Extreme
Makeover, where they take someone's house and either update or just
completely tear it down and rebuild... no less. I don't think Vic would
mind me sharing the below note...

Hello Brad,
I'm finally back online after a long time of being sequestered, I mean my
family and myself. We have indeed been through the extreme makeover that I 
was
telling you that might happen and it did. We were sent to Disney world. I
cannot talk about any details for now until our show has been aired so 
please
excuse me if I'm a little vague.  All I can say right now is that God is
good, no matter what.
There are lots and lots of articles about us but this was one of the first
to come out from a google search. If you care to try at google, just use 
these
as your keywords:
"bergenfield llanes extreme makeover"
Thanks so much for everything Brad.
always, Vic.
begin article
NJ.com's Printer-Friendly Page
Home makeover a welcome reality for blind, deaf family
Thursday, May 25, 2006
By KEVIN COUGHLIN
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
Cell-cams and iPods make life more fun. Every now and then, gadgets also
make life better. A house in Bergenfield should be a prime example.
Yes, this involves reality TV. Still, it's a pretty safe bet that about
$100,000 of donated technology that was installed for free earlier this 
month -
from talking thermostats to pulsating smoke alarms to specialized
communications gear - will make a real difference for the home's blind and
deaf occupants
once the camera crews vanish.
"The family was not disabled. The house was disabled. We're enabling the
house," actress Marlee Matlin said May 8, as jackhammers jackhammered, 
tractors
tractored and a swarm of construction volunteers voluntarily constructed a
new home for the Llanes family of Bergen County.
Matlin, who is deaf, will host a two-hour episode of "Extreme Makeover:
Home Edition" to air on ABC in July.
The Llanes 50-year-old split- level house was small, dark, noisy and hard
to navigate before volunteers demolished it over the weekend.
But obstacles are nothing new for this clan.
Blind from a hereditary disease, Vicente Llanes, 42, came from the
Philippines in 1997 seeking medical treatment. His mother, Isabel, is
blind. His wife,
Maria, a physical therapist, is battling thyroid cancer. Daughters Guenivir
and Carrie are going blind from the same disease their father has, and 
teenage
son Zeb is deaf because his mother contracted German measles during 
pregnancy.
Recently, the show's producers told family members they were chosen from
thousands of applicants and sent them to Walt Disney World while the house 
was
being rebuilt. On May 11, they returned to a home nearly twice as large as
the 1,300-square-foot original, now dubbed a "Z Home" for its A- to-Z
technology,
by Brian Stolar of the Pinnacle Companies, the Chatham builders overseeing
the project.
There will be smoke sensors that give spoken warnings, a Braille printer
that can be controlled wirelessly by computers throughout the house, and
"iCommunicator"
software to convert speech into sign-language video clips - in real time.
A Hackensack company called GoAmerica is supplying BlackBerrys and a relay
service, so Zeb Llanes (pronounced "Lee-ann-is") can communicate by phone 
with
his mom by sending text messages to an operator.
The handheld "Colorino" can scan and say the colors of clothes and other
objects. Stevie Wonder used the device to tease visitors about their 
ethnicity
at a trade show, said Fran Hennelly of Independent Living Aids, a Long
Island company on hand for a media preview.
Jon Gabry, a Kearny teen who is blind and deaf, showed off the BrailleNote,
a keyboard that lets him type Web queries and then read the results in 
Braille.
Paired with a GPS satellite tracking device and mapping software, the
BrailleNote can tell blind users exactly where they are, with directions to
nearby
restaurants.
Home Automated Living has software called - what else? - HAL, to let the
Llanes family program lighting, heating and security systems via
microphones, telephones,
the TV or the Web. About the only thing HAL won't do, company President Tim
Shriver said, is work with Apple computers. (Microsoft is among the 
project's
donors.)
Many people with disabilities "don't even know all this exists," said
Joanne Castellano of Shrewsbury's Family Resources Associates, a training
agency.
Some can't afford such technology, which doesn't benefit from the same
cost-shrinking economies of scale as many consumer gadgets. Government aid
often
is tied to employment, experts said.
Blind since birth, Richard Fox remembers typing school papers, only to be
told later that the typewriter ribbon was shot.
"Some of this can make life tremendously easier," said Fox, who coaches the
disabled for DeWitt & Associates of Midland Park. "But if you don't have a
positive
attitude and confidence, (technology) won't help you, whether it's a
typewriter or this other stuff."
The Llanes family should catch on fast. Vicente, a naturalized citizen, has
designed software for the blind and digitized books for a nonprofit called
BookShare.
Zeb also is computer savvy, and other family members are active with church
and civic groups, according to publicists for the show.
"The most important thing is the Llaneses were a happy family before we got
here, and they will be happier after we leave," said Matlin, an Oscar winner
for "Children of a Lesser God" in 1986.
© 2006  The Jersey Journal
© 2006 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.