CORVALLIS, Ore. (AP) -- Krs Evans is a man who takes matters into his own hands.
Case in point: His name used to be Chris. But after he found himself booked into the same airline seat as another passenger on a flight to Germany, he changed the spelling. Problem solved.
Now he's adapting to a much bigger challenge: life as a paraplegic.
In 2001 Evans was working as a Hotshot, part of an elite crew of federal interagency firefighters. His California-based team had been called to Kentucky to battle an expected rash of Halloween arson fires.
He was mopping up a small blaze when a 67-foot black locust tree fell over and hit him on the head. His hardhat saved his life, but a severe spinal injury left him paralyzed below the breastbone.
Evans spent two weeks in a coma, a month in intensive care and five months in rehab before being discharged. He's spent years coming to terms with his injury. He wanted a way to stay on top of his condition, to monitor whether it was getting better or worse.
So he went to a tattoo artist.
Today a vine, studded with thorns and flowers, girdles his midsection, marking the dividing line between sensation and numbness. This way, he figures, he can tell if his paralysis is getting better - or worse.
"It's kind of a visual statement of how I feel about it," Evans said.
He's also coming to grips with the problem of making a living. To improve his circumstances, he enrolled in college, first in his native California and then, three years ago, at Oregon State University. Right now he's studying business, but he's tinkering with his major to find a way to put more emphasis on entrepreneurship.
"I feel like I'm being trained to work for the man when I want to be the man," he said.
To that end, he's started a home-based business producing handy, inexpensive gadgets for his former mates on the fire line. His best seller is a simple adapter that lets firefighters recharge their cell phones in the field using the spare battery pack for their walkie-talkie and a cord designed to plug into a car's cigarette lighter.
He does a lot of the fabrication himself.
"I'll sit here and I'll watch TV for an hour and make 30 or so," he said.
There's also a clamp that enables a firefighter to pinch off the flow in a firehose without trekking all the way back to the water tender. And there's a crank-operated roller to make winding the hose easier.
"I knew there had to be a better way to do that," he said.
"I came up with the idea while I was still on the crew. The golden-silver lining on the thing has been, since the accident, I've had more time to work on this stuff."
Evans doesn't make much money on his inventions - any income he earns is subtracted from his monthly worker's compensation payments. But he doesn't plan to stay at this level forever.
For him, it came down to a simple choice: feel sorry for himself, or take control of his life.
"I can either sit on my ass and watch TV all day and bitch about it, or I can get off my ass and do something about it. And the only way I can see to do that is to educate myself so I have some sort of marketable skill and hopefully work that into someday working for myself," Evans said.
"I'm going to be that guy someday. I'm going to own the business that people use and are paying me for, or be the manufacturer who's making the little dingus that everybody uses."
