Charlie Sheen pays for injured teen's therapy dog

Car­rie Antlfin­ger, Asso­ci­ated Press

MILWAUKEE (AP) — There’s a 15-year-old Florida girl who didn’t really know much about Char­lie Sheen before this week — but does now.

The actor wired $10,000 to Tea­gan Marti and her fam­ily on Thurs­day for a ther­apy dog to help in her reha­bil­i­ta­tion from injuries sus­tained when she plum­meted 100 feet from a Wis­con­sin amuse­ment park ride in 2010.

“I think he’s a very kind per­son for help­ing me and my fam­ily and very gen­er­ous,” Tea­gan Marti said by phone Thurs­day from her home in Park­land, Fla.

Tea­gan Marti suf­fered brain, spine, pelvis and inter­nal injuries in July 2010 when nets and air bags that were sup­posed to catch rid­ers on a free-fall ride were not raised. She had con­vinced her fam­ily to make the trip from Florida to Extreme World in Wis­con­sin Dells after see­ing the amuse­ment park’s Ter­mi­nal Veloc­ity ride on the Travel Channel.

She was hos­pi­tal­ized in Wis­con­sin and Florida for three months. She ini­tially had no use of her arms or legs but through phys­i­cal ther­apy is able to walk again with a walker.

Tea­gan Marti’s mother, Julie Marti, said they are finan­cially in trou­ble from the med­ical bills and her recent divorce. Their house is being fore­closed upon and insur­ance isn’t cov­er­ing phys­i­cal ther­apy any­more, she said. She had no idea how they would pay for the Eng­lish Golden Retriever puppy.

“I’m in such dis­be­lief,” Julie Marti said. “I was cry­ing. … What a guy. What a guy.”

The dog is being trained in Fond du Lac to turn on lights, pick up objects and be the teen’s con­stant companion.

Lucia Wil­gus, of Eau Claire, became friends with the Mar­tis after hear­ing of the acci­dent and has spear­headed fundrais­ing and helped find the dog and arrange training.

She sent a let­ter this week to Sheen through Sheen’s god­fa­ther, who is a Wil­gus fam­ily friend and Bene­dic­tine brother in the Benet Lake, Wis. She esti­mated the train­ing and related costs would be around $6,000.

Sheen said he decided to give more for extra costs. The request had a “per­sonal vibe” since it came through his god­fa­ther, and “if there’s a need for more I told them to call me,” he said.

“I like to pay it for­ward,” Sheen said Thurs­day in a phone inter­view from Los Ange­les. “Peo­ple come into your orbit for a rea­son. You don’t always know what that is ahead of time, but if I ignore these requests then I don’t have any oppor­tu­nity to see where these things lead us, or lead me.”

He said he doesn’t like to pub­li­cize most of his dona­tions, but wanted to talk about this one to inspire oth­ers to donate.

Tea­gan Marti gets the dog on her birth­day in Sep­tem­ber but hasn’t made up her mind on a name.

“I think they should name the dog Char­lie,” Sheen joked.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Feb 15 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.