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One Lewisville teen’s life changed in a second after he suffered a spinal cord injury two years ago.
Then-15-year-old Hank Allen was jumping on a trampoline when he landed wrong, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. Now, he’s 18 and an entrepreneur using his business to help other quadriplegics.
Before Hank’s injury, he was on West Forsyth’s Varsity swim and dive team but then COVID-19 brought that to a halt.
“Back during the lockdown when everyone was stuck at home really, my only avenue to get any kind of accurate exercise was on the trampoline,” Hank Allen said. “And I had just been practicing some tricks that I’ve done before and I just happened to lay in the wrong way on my head. That’s, that’s when I became paralyzed.”
Hank is a c5-c6 quadriplegic meaning he’s paralyzed from the chest down. To help with his hand function, his mom, Abby bought him a hand-crank knitting loom.
“I kind of left him to it and came in, he’s like, done with my hat. He put it on, put the yarn on, made the hat, took it off the loom, and I thought how in the world with not having the hand function, were you able to actually like take the needle and like take it off the womb?” Abby Allen, Hank’s mom said.
Abby added that “it was surprising that he was able to do it from start to finish so that was kind of a proud mom moment for me that he had kind of conquered that challenge.”
Hank quickly went from making one or two hats a day to 30 or 40 a week. So they thought, they could make this into a business.
“Having a spinal cord injury, employers look at you and think that you’re not capable of working. And so starting my own business was a way for me to kind of do things on my own,” Hank said.
Hank’s sales go towards putting together toolboxes with adaptive gear that he donates to other people like him.
“Throughout my whole journey, I’ve had many people who care about me, and who have helped me get through these hard times and I want to do the same for other people,” Hank said.
Hank, with the help of his mom, officially launched their website, ‘HankHats Originals’ on the two-year anniversary of his accident, on June 9.
Not only can you order the original knit beanies but he also sells bucket hats, baseball caps, T-shirts and more.
“Every order brings us closer to doing any one of those toolkits. The more you share the story and the mission, the more people that will know about it, and the more people we can help,” Hank said.
For more information about ‘HankHats Originals’ you can go to their website, HankHatsOriginals.com.
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