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Gov. Hogan honors Paralympian swimmer Becca Meyers

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Posted at 4:21 PM, Jul 26, 2021
and last updated 2021-07-26 17:26:01-04

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Governor Larry Hogan signed an executive order designating July as disability and cultural achievements month.

To honor that, the Governor gave Paralympic swimmer, Becca Meyers, a governors citation.

Meyers has three gold and one silver from previous Olympics and she holds the world record for the 400 meter individual medley race.

Meyers is blind and deaf. She withdrew from the Paralympics in Tokyo because Olympic organizers would not let her mother be her personal care assistant.

RELATED: Maryland gold-medal paralympian had no choice but to drop out of Tokyo Olympics

"I was one of many that called the Olympic committee to reverse that decision," Governor Hogan saying how proud he was of Meyers.

Becca tells us in Brazil, the Olympic committee had fallen short in taking care of the Paralympic athletes. She says she was stuck in her room, emotional and frustrated because no PCA was around to take her to get food.

In Rio they were thinking of the Paralympics. Gold or silver medals, the blind athletes cold not tell them apart so they put beads in the gold medals.

"When I first got this gold medal, I held it up to my Cochlea Implant and I shook it and I was so excited to hear that," said Meyers.

Maria Meyers is Becca's mom. She has traveled around the world as a PCA for Becca in other Olympics and international games and knows how overwhelming it is to be a PCA.

In Tokyo the Olympic committee has assigned one personal assistant for all 34 American Paralympic athletes. She saw how they failed Becca in previous games with assistants and knows the difficulties of navigating a life changing event like the Olympics for just one person, she can not see how one personal care assistant can handle 34 individuals by themselves.

"Every single one will need some help at some point and they deserve to have help and one for 34 athletes, it's not right. It's inexcusable," said Maria.

As Maryland is on the forefront for disabled people, other organization may not be as capable.

"She's getting left behind, we got to make change. It has to happen, we got to make change," said Maria.