DISABLED REALTORS -- part 1

Selling real estate is filled with challenges. There are difficult buyers, quirky sellers, confusing contracts, changing economies and a host of other potential pitfalls. A trio of Sunshine State Realtors negotiates through all those hurdles while also coping with significant disabilities. But they don’t want to be thought of as “disabled,” or worse yet, “special” Realtors. Above all, they are savvy business people, they are educated agents, they are outstanding client advocates. But all three acknowledge that they have achieved while managing the demands of disabilities ranging from vision loss, memory impairment and cognitive difficulties. Erodio Diaz would have been an airline pilot if he hadn’t lost his vision, said the Hialeah-based commercial and residential Realtor, who has been working in the real estate field since 1967. Diaz came to the United States at age 9 from Havana, Cuba. At age 13, he lost his sight and many of his friends, who could not relate to his new world without vision. “When I lost my sight, I didn’t know what to do. I even thought about suicide,” said Diaz. At age 17, he returned to school, this time a school for the blind. There he met classmates who, unlike himself, had been blind from birth. They had no concept of what colors looked like.