ENCINITAS — Scott Valley Park will be renovated to accommodate children of all abilities thanks to over $40,000 in donations from the community and a family’s fundraising effort inspired by the memory of their daughter.
San Marcos residents Tyler and Emily Jones launched a campaign for a more accessible park in San Diego County following the death of their daughter, Sophie, in 2019. After suffering an anoxic brain injury earlier in her life, Sophie developed symptoms similar to those of cerebral palsy.
At age 11, Sophie died due to complications from surgery.
During her life, Sophie could only play in a park that accommodated her needs once, and it was in another state. On a family trip, Sophie and her cousins played on the All Together Playground in Orem, Utah, enjoying features like a merry-go-round, zipline and teeter-totter accessible to wheelchair users.
Emily said when she visited Sophie at school, she noticed most students with disabilities would sit underneath the lunch tables at recess.
“There’s no equipment for them to play, so their recess is just sitting there watching the other kids play,” Emily said. “After years and years of watching that, I was just so excited to finally have some equipment for her to play on and excited to go home and find a park.”
But when they returned to San Marcos, Sophie had no option to play similarly.
Orem is in Utah County, with a population of just under 700,000. Emily said she was shocked that San Diego County, with over 3 million people, didn’t have an all-abilities park.
After Sophie died, Emily remembers looking at her living room full of sympathy flowers representing over $1,000.
“I thought, ‘What a shame that these will all die and all of this money will just disappear,’” Emily said. “And I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be neat if, in lieu of flowers, our community could donate so that Sophie’s friends could play at a park like she did?’”
Emily and Tyler directed friends to a GoFundMe page that raised over $43,000 in just a few weeks. Donations came from children as young as five who walked up to the Jones’ front door with handfuls of coins, some of which still had glitter from the tooth fairy’s delivery, Emily said.
“Kids have this amazing ability for empathy,” she said.
Emily reached out to several cities in the area for collaboration on a park with no success before contacting the city of Encinitas. After facing delays due to COVID-19, the Encinitas City Council accepted the Jones’ donation on Sept. 27 and outlined plans to put it towards a $350,000 renovation of Scott Valley Park.
The renovation will replace equipment that has reached the end of its service life with more accessible features: a play structure with access by ramp, stairs and climbers leading to slides at two different heights, a spinner flush with the ground allowing wheelchairs and mobility aids to roll onto the platform, a seesaw with four high-back seats and grab bars, and an accessible area to transfer from mobility devices.
The park’s swingset will have two traditional belt swings, a more accessible bucket seat and a mommy-and-me seat with space for a caregiver and a child in two seats facing each other. A separate area for tots will include a playhouse and sensory toys like musical notes, wheels and drums.
In addition to the play equipment, a colorful seating area with benches of different shapes and sizes and a wheelchair seat that reads, “Life is better when we play together.”
The playground is expected to open in the spring or summer of 2024.
“It’s one thing to give kids a lecture or a PowerPoint presentation — even adults — but we’re gonna learn 10 times more from interacting and playing together,” Emily said.
