For years, Dale Coski came into work every morning at Denver’s Agency for Human Rights & Community Partnerships and ran her wheelchair into the door until someone opened it.
Dale Coski (Family photo)
“We would come get her and she’d say, ‘Oh, thanks for answering the door,’” said longtime colleague Lorrie Kosinski, laughing at the memory.
The routine started after the agency moved from a public-facing office to a badge-only floor, a cumbersome and inaccessible move for wheelchair users like Coski.
Coski’s tenacity, passion and kindness made lasting impacts on Colorado’s disabled community as well as the people who knew her, according to friends and former coworkers. She died on Sept. 26 at 67 after an illness.
Coski’s career fighting for disability rights began when she lost her left leg and sustained a closed head injury after she was hit by a vehicle in 1983 while working as a Denver Police Department officer.
Coski was helping a stranded driver when she was hit, and the injury caused quadriplegia, according to her obituary.
Spinal cord injuries are challenging and all-encompassing, said friend and colleague Kathy Hulse, a clinical care manager and social worker at Craig Hospital.
“Dale chose to return to work and create a position for herself that serves the community and the disabled community,” Hulse said. “She did this before the Americans with Disabilities Act — she was really a trailblazer.”
Coski wasn’t one to talk about her accomplishments, Kosinski said, but her impact is clear.
She developed Denver’s disability parking applications, which would become a national model. She helped create the city’s disability parking enforcement program and she testified in support of state laws to grant access to service dogs alongside her own service dog, Perseverance or “Persey” — the first service dog in Colorado.
Coski had the uniquely challenging and vital role of advocating for disability rights from the inside, said Julie Reiskin, co-executive director of the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition.
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“It’s often easier to be on the outside where we’re saying what needs to be different,” Reiskin said. “But we need people inside the government who can be allies and help people inside the system understand what we need.”
At one meeting she attended with Coski, Reiskin remembers a city official claiming that since no one was misusing disabled parking spots, like using tags belonging to deceased relatives, there was no problem to address.
“She piped up and said, ‘Well then there’s a lot of dead people going to games at Coors Field,” and that shut down that conversation, which was kind of awesome,” Reiskin said, laughing.
For Reiskin, one of Coski’s most significant contributions is improved access for disabled people in Denver.
“She really cared about people being able to enjoy all the great things the city has to offer and to be able to participate fully in our community,” she said. “That’s part of her legacy.”
Coski was born November 1956 in Maryland to parents Jerome and Genevieve Coski. She grew up in the Denver area, graduating from Kennedy High School in 1974, according to her obituary.
Coski worked as a school teacher in Chicago, entered The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in college but left before professing vows, and served in the Army during the Cold War as an intelligence officer.
Coski married her wife, Alice Fritz, in 2015. She is survived by Fritz, sister Jean Bondio, nephew James Marcil and an “extraordinary number” of friends, loved ones and colleagues.
Services will be on Saturday at Capitol Heights Presbyterian Church, 1100 Fillmore St. in Denver. A one-hour viewing starts at 10 a.m., followed by a funeral mass and reception. Limited on-street parking is available.
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