Audrey Dominguez remembers the day her son came home, shortly after beginning his fifth-grade year at Smyer Elementary, and announced that his band teacher had assigned him the trombone.
She sighed, knowing that for 10-year-old Malakai Johnson, who was born without most of his right hand, any instrument was going to be nearly impossible to play.
While researching alternative instruments that might work for Malakai, she happened across an article about SSivaTeja Pati, a Texas Tech University student who had 3S-printed a prosthetic hand for 8-year-old Toby Carrizales just a few months earlier. On a whim, she reached out to Pati.
“It was a long shot, but it was one I just had to take,” Dominguez said.
Five months later, Malakai has become the second child to receive one of Pati’s prosthetic creations. After spending the first decade of his life with only one hand, Malakai is looking forward to a future with two.
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