It isn't every day that Don Schoendorfer gets a call from the White House. In fact, the Santa Ana resident had never gotten any calls from the White House, which is why he was skeptical when a woman claiming to be with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives called and said President Bush wanted to meet with him.

This was no prank call -- the president wanted to meet Schoendorfer to commend him for his work with the Free Wheelchair Mission.

" I still feel like it was a dream," Schoendorfer said of his trip to the Oval Office three weeks ago. He said the president wanted to encourage the project and asked if there was any way he could help. "I gave him a few ideas," Schoendorfer said.

Schoendorfer founded the Costa Mesa-based organization -- which has a goal of distributing 20 million wheelchairs to physically disabled people in underdeveloped countries by the year 2010 -- four years ago. The project became a dream of his when he and his wife vacationed in Morocco several years ago and saw a woman with a physical handicap trying to cross the street by digging her nails into the ground and dragging her body through the dirt.

He said that image has stayed with him.

In 1999, Schoendorfer decided it was time to do something for the millions of people who suffer from handicaps and cannot move around very well on their own. After doing some research, Schoendorfer discovered that wheelchairs are extremely expensive.

As an engineer, Schoendorfer has always loved designing and building useful gadgets. He started tinkering with different designs and eventually came up with a relatively comfortable, inexpensive and easy-to-assemble wheelchair prototype -- a plastic lawn chair with mountain-bike tires and metal tubing as its frame. The cost of one of these chairs is $41.17.

He started by making 100 of the chairs in his garage. He then heard that Mariner's Church in Irvine was looking for doctors and nurses to assist on a mission trip to India. Although he is not a medical doctor, Schoendorfer felt this would be a good way to empty his garage while fulfilling his mission of sharing the gift of mobility.

Reactions to his idea were less than encouraging -- people told him that poor people in underdeveloped countries would not know how to use them. Schoendorfer persisted and wound up tagging along on the India trip with four of his wheelchairs.

"The very first one turned out to be a success," Schoendorfer said. "We realized it was going to be a hit."

That was in February of 2001.

The Free Wheelchair Mission has since distributed about 73,000 of the converted lawn chairs, which are now manufactured by a company in China, to people in 45 countries. Schoendorfer credits God with all the success of Free Wheelchair Mission and said he feels it's his calling to spread the gift of mobility.

"All we have to do is work as hard as we can and have faith," he said.

Although the organization has religious roots, the beliefs of recipients do not matter. The only requirements are: They must be poor; they must need a wheelchair; and they must have a family member or someone who is willing to help them around. Schoendorfer said he does not preach to the recipients, but just tells them the wheelchair came from God.

"When you give a wheelchair to a person, it really will change their life forever," Schoendorfer said. Most of the people who have been given chairs were previously confined to a very small area. "This is the nicest thing they've ever received."

Although he keeps himself busy operating the Costa Mesa warehouse, Schoendorfer still goes on trips himself once or twice a year. He went to Peru in February and is planning a trip to India in the fall.

For more information on the Free Wheelchair Mission, call (714) 708-2100 or visit www.freewheelchairmission.org.

* LINDSAY SANDHAM is the news assistant. She can be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at lindsay.sandham@latimes.com.