Tucson's Desert View High students make prosthetic legs for developing countries

“This is made to fit a lot of different people,” Lucy Pacheco explains, speaking over the echoing roar of manufacturing equipment.

Pacheco inserts the leg “bone” into a silicone ankle as Santino Rodriquez holds the foot down. The pair don their safety glasses like they’ve been wearing them for years and expertly explain how the leg is designed and manufactured in-house.

“We’re producing about 30 legs this year,” Rodriquez says.

In class.

Pacheco and Rodriquez are seniors at Desert View High School. They are enrolled in a program made up of a drafting class and a precision manufacturing class.

It starts with drafting. Students learn how to create CAD (computer aided drafting) designs and blueprints that can be sent to the precision manufacturing class.

Cesar Gutierrez teaches precision manufacturing and drafting at Desert View. He said one of the beginning projects for students is creating a 3D puzzle.

“It’s like tricking them to learn,” he says, smiling. “They create the project so that they can learn how to do the motions.”

Not only do students learn how to set up machinery, they write their own programs for the equipment in order to create a finished product.

But prosthetic legs?

The concept began at the beginning, Gutierrez said: a means for teaching drafting.

“Just coming in learning how to draft wasn’t anything that they were interested in,” he said. “It’s always thinking about how do you tie it in? How do you tie in industry to what they’re learning? How do you make it relevant for them?”

At a Harbor Freight Tools for Schools conference, Gutierrez found out about digitally-printed prosthetic limbs. He was sold.

Learning the particulars of drafting and manufacturing aren’t the only “why’s.” Eventually the class connected with the SKY Youth organization’s Life Changer Prosthetics program.

The student-designed and -constructed prosthetic legs are distributed internationally to amputees in developing countries.

“Many working class citizens in these countries are fortunate to earn five dollars a day, with modern prosthetic legs costing sixty thousand dollars making them unattainable for most amputees around the world,” the SKY website states.

In October students were supposed to travel to Guatemala on a humanitarian trip until political unrest in the Central American nation put their trip on pause.

SKY Youth organization was going to make the trip happen. Gutierrez said students might still be able to go, depending on how safe organizers can keep students.

Desert View’s prosthetic leg manufacturing program has been funded by grants, JTED funds and money kicked in by the school district, Gutierrez explained. Desert View High School, at 4101 E. Valencia Road, is in Sunnyside Unified School District.

The shop itself is sustained by student efforts. Fundraisers and other activities help pay for things like finishing the shop floor and equipment.

Career and technical education (CTE) classes and programs have surged across the nation, in a widespread effort to promote industry and teach students practical workforce skills, ideally making them more employable fresh out of high school.

However, a CTE class that designs and manufactures functioning prosthetics is rare. To Gutierrez’s knowledge, there are five other similar programs.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Desert View students started by making prosthetic leg parts.

The students wanted more, Gutierrez said.

“They didn’t want to make one part. They want to make the entire thing.”

Rodriquez can still remember when the first prosthetic legs were completed.

“It’s really exciting to me to see I actually did all this work that’s helping other people. It’s not just something that is helping me out personally. I was really excited.”

There is an air of confidence and professionalism in the shop, but students are often still seen as rookies.

Pacheco knows it. A lot of people write high school kids like her off, she said.

“Yeah, that’s exactly why we’re doing it. I want to be able to show you that even in this age group we’re still able to get out there and do things that some people don’t even get to do in their lifetime.”

For Gutierrez, coming to the classroom is a “blessing.” He gets to observe students through all four years of high school.

“You look at a student that has no idea what they want to do with their lives and you bring in a project like the golf club, or the prosthetic leg … or they start meeting people from industry and professionals. They start forming their own opinions or ‘why’s.’ Now they start saying, ‘this is what I want to do with my life’.”

For Rodriquez it has been a confidence booster.

“Before this class like I was super quiet, super closed off,” he says. Rodriquez seems in awe of his achievement.

“Now like I’m able to be in there, pretty much completely running the shop, along with Lucy.”

In a separate room 3D printers and precision measuring equipment rest among classroom tables of students hunched over laptops. The printers whir and an appendage that looks like a record player tonearm precisely squeezes out day-glo silicone onto a flat, moving surface.

Pacheco and Rodriquez are eager to show off the state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment.

“I’m going to reset this one, so you can see it from when it starts,” Rodriquez says, tapping orders into a small screen on the printer.

It begins again, squeezing out thin, closed spiral discs. The two students watch, hands on their hips, satisfied.

“It takes a while,” Rodriquez says, his eyes fixated on the rhythmic process.

It takes a while to learn and grow, too, and Gutierrez has been enjoying watching his students do just that.

Still, explaining how he feels about his students isn’t easy.

“I don’t know if I have words …,” Gutierrez says, seated in his office. He shakes his head slightly, thinking. It is difficult to hear over the machinery running, but Gutierrez is loud and clear.

“I am proud of my students. So, so proud of them.”