Not permanently, mind you. Jerin, who has multiple sclerosis, gets around town in a chair, and she wants the city's top official to see life from her perspective. If the weather holds, they'll ride around the Garden City on Friday.
“I can't put him (Engen) in a chair and call him disabled. But I sure can help him see the world from my point of view - at least our little corner of it,” Jerin said.
“My legs just stopped working,” Jerin said.
She used a manual chair for a while. Then, her health worsened so much the manual chair didn't allow her to get out of the house. She needed more mobility.
“I was getting really depressed. ... I was getting so isolated,” Jerin said.
She tried out a few power chairs, and with the help of a physical therapist and Norco Medical folks, found one that fit. The chair is making a big difference in her life.
“I'm out of the house. I'm participating in doing some volunteer work,” Jerin said.
And she decided she wanted to help people with disabilities raise their voices in the public arena.
In May, Jerin placed a call to the mayor's office and asked him to roll along with her on some of her usual daily trips. The mayor agreed. It isn't a handicapped-for-a-day stunt, but it's about helping him understand the challenges of using a wheelchair in Missoula.
“It sounded perfectly reasonable to me. I'm generally happy to try to understand what's cooking with the folks I serve,” Engen said.
Jerin doesn't have any particular spots in mind she wants to show the mayor. Missoula has dangerous areas in need of repair, and it has smooth routes, too. She and Engen will travel some of her usual circuits and come across the good and the bad both.
“I plan to just take him on some of the routes I go on pretty much daily. There's some really excellent trails and paths in Missoula,” she said.
She'd like to encourage the city to keep building pathways that work well for people in wheelchairs - and that's a lot of people, she said. Jerin learned that some 43 million people in the United States have a disability. That's about one in five people, but in the community, she doesn't see nearly that many people with visible disabilities.
Her quest is to bring more of them out into the public eye. People in chairs need to feel more comfortable out of their houses, and people who don't use chairs need to get used to folks who do use them.
“People often scare. They often connote any type of a wheelchair with a mental disability. They don't know. They're ignorant. I don't mean that in a derogatory way. They just don't have the experience with handicapped individuals,” she said.
Jerin suspects more folks will need chairs in the future because as people grow older, the likelihood that they'll have a disability increases.
“And the boomer generation is getting old,” Jerin said.
Friday's trip is sure to be a warm one, and Jerin has planned the tour with care. She is bringing extra water to help the mayor stay hydrated. She ordered a chair that's expected to fit - the mayor is not petite - and made sure Mountain Line can lift him up.
“I told him to wear a hat and sunglasses. I'll bring sunscreen in case he hasn't thought of that,” she said.
They'll take off around 10 a.m. and finish before the heat of the day becomes difficult to bear. She believes they'll finish at noon - a short trip compared with another wheelchair journey she has planned.
In September, Jerin heads to Colorado to visit her brother. It's part of her personal odyssey to unite people with disabilities, and she's calling it “The Get Out of My Way Tour.”
“I think that we'll start now - getting out there - and change will happen. Change will happen.”
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