'Great American success story' also includes a good dog

In the early 1980s, Deb Swenson was working as a night attendant at an athletic club job when a "freak accident" damaged the cornea of her left eye. Over the course of a couple of months, she lost the use of that eye and with it her job, her ability to get around and most important, her self-worth.

She ended up in St. Paul public housing, relying on Social Security to pay bills. Her future, if you could call it that, was bleak.

"I was pretty miserable and was making everybody around me miserable," said Swenson. who is legally blind. "I was very hopeless, very depressed."

Then something arrived that would alter the arc of Swenson's life in an almost unimaginable way: a dog.

Cindy Cohen, a counselor at the old Minneapolis Society of the Blind (now Vision Loss Resources) had a guide dog, and Swenson saw how much she could accomplish with the help of the dog. So she applied for a dog from Guide Dogs for the Blind in California. They flew her out for a month and tried to find a dog that matched her personality and her walking pace.

It didn't take long before Swenson hit if off with a "regal" male yellow lab named "Perro," whom she took home in January 1986.

"He changed my life," said Swenson. "He gave me a reason to get up and get out of the house. I wanted more."

"When you are poor and blind, you get underestimated a lot," she said. "I don't like to be underestimated. One day I looked around and thought, 'I could be a lawyer.'"

Not everyone agreed, including a counselor who discouraged her.

But Swenson had also won some fans, including former St. Paul City Council Member Bob Long, and DFL activist and attorney David Lillehaug, both of whom encouraged her to go to college and law school.

Swenson got accepted and started going full time in 1988, something that was unheard of at the time. Every day, she got on a Metro Mobility vehicle with the help of Perro. "He was a one-person dog," she said. "We were a team."

Swenson graduated Phi Beta Kappa four years later, then applied for law school at Stanford. Because she needed an assistant to fill in the dots for her, Swenson was excused from being timed on the LSAT exam. But she insisted they time the test. "It was very important to me that I was doing the same as everyone else," she said.

After seeing Swenson at meetings, "It became apparent that this was one very smart woman, but she did not have confidence in herself," said Lillehaug, who was initially drawn to her because he also had a yellow lab. Lillehaug eventually became a mentor.

"She's a great American success story," said Long. "She's proof that with a little help, people who are determined can do anything."

The career hasn't been without bumps. Discrimination has been both subtle and blatant. One employer said they "didn't want the face of the company to be someone with an eye patch and a dog."

Now, Swenson gets on the 470 bus from Eagan with her third guide dog, Kudo. (Her second dog, Janson, died of cancer after years of loyal work.) Same bus driver every day, same seat for Swenson and Kudo. Kudo, a lumbering yellow lab who eagerly licked my hand when I offered it, was wearing a red, white and blue bandanna one recent day. He has a bed in the corner of the office, surrounded by stuffed animals and squeaky toys.

Sitting in her 20th-floor office in the IDS building, where she is now a bankruptcy attorney for Lomen Abdo, where "they only care that I am a good attorney," Swenson said now is her time to pay back those who have helped her get this far.

"I wouldn't be where I am without my dogs," she said. "It's because they changed my outlook on life. They made me confident and made me believe I could do anything.

"They helped me to find me."