‘Tool Doctor’ working despite double amputation

PALMER — Some people may only know Israel Hale as a son of “Papa Pilgrim,” but he is much more than that.

Nowadays, Hale is a boss, co-worker, teammate, alpaca shearer and general handyman, having amassed a great number of skills growing up in the bush of Alaska. He is also a double amputee, as the result of a 2012 accident in which he was pinned between two vehicles. He and his wife, Cori, were in Anchorage celebrating their six-month anniversary that night.

But the loss of his legs hasn’t stopped him from moving on in life.

Hale was set to start building a house for his family the day after the accident, when the trusses he ordered were supposed to be delivered. Rather than put the construction on hold, Hale’s boss at the time took it upon himself to start the process.

“My boss decided just to go ahead and build my house for me in faith that it would somehow get paid for,” Hale said.

And it did.

“By the time I got out of the hospital, the house was … ready to be painted and 100 percent paid for by the community and Spenard (Builder’s Supply) and Valley Block and Concrete,” Hale said. “It was just really a miracle.”

As grateful as he was for the unsolicited support, Hale wasn’t about to let everyone else do all the hard work. In a wheelchair, with bloody bandages still wrapped around his legs, Hale and his wife painted the house.

“After my accident, I told my wife that it was OK, that as long as I wasn’t paralyzed I was gonna be OK, that I could keep going,” Hale remembered. “You just gotta have that mentality, and you can do a lot of things in life.”

And he has. Since the accident, Hale has adapted to the use of his “stubbies,” as he calls them — short prosthetics that allow him to continue shearing alpacas and tinkering with small engines, for example. He’ll wear the full-length prosthetics to church at Manna Baptist or out to dinner with his wife, he said, but the stubbies give him more mobility in the garage of Alaska Tool Doctor, the repair shop he opened in April.

“Laying in bed one night, we kept talking about what I could do for a living and … I was like, ‘I got it! I can work on small engines, I know how to do it,’” Hale said, recalling the moment the Tool Doctor was born.

Hale hadn’t planned to be his own boss, but the months-long job search after the accident led him to believe that no one else was going to hire him.

“I couldn’t find a job to save my life,” he said — despite having been trained to weld, fabricate, frame, build, paint, operate heavy equipment, shoe and train horses and shear alpacas, among other things.

“I was forced to do something to make a living,” he continued. “I’m happy now, but it was tough.”

As with building and paying for his house, Hale’s neighbors were there to lend a helping hand in getting Alaska Tool Doctor started. One in particular worked for Alaska Public Rental, commonly referred to as APR, and was willing to not only rent out his personal garage for Hale to start his business, but to pass out his business cards at APR. (APR only repairs certain brands of equipment, and Hale was looking to service the rest of the spectrum, so competition wasn’t really an issue.)

“People that you know, when you’re honest and you work uprightly, are there for you when you need it,” Hale explained.

Now, Hale has his own facility off the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, next to the Red Barn Thrift Store east of Hemmer Road.

‘The way I grew up’

Hale didn’t know how to read or write until he was 18. But that proved to be a smaller barrier than more formally educated people might expect.

“I still don’t know a whole lot, but I know enough to get me by in what I do, and I learn things every day,” he said.

Perhaps it helps that, as a young boy living in (and off of) the wilderness, Hale had to get savvy with problem-solving quickly. If he and his brothers were miles from home when their snowmachine broke down in 60-below-zero weather, for example, they had to be able to fix it, and fix it fast, he said.

“I learned most of what I’ve learned by trial and error,” Hale said. “It was the way I grew up.”

That “way” has also informed how he deals with adversity and relates to people. While in the grocery store one time, for example, he looked down to find a small child gripping his wheelchair, head underneath Hale’s legs, looking up at the stubbies.

“He was so embarrassed when I turned around and looked, but I just told him ‘it’s OK,’ (and) I explained to him how I lost my legs,” Hale said.

And that’s much the way he’ll respond to any curious soul, no matter what their age.

“It’s fun, I enjoy it. I never take it as mean,” Hale said.

Even on his darkest days — which it seems are past — he is thankful for how far he’s come.

“I credit all this to the Lord,” Hale said.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.