Piscataway QuickChek Invents Chair for Employee With Muscular Disease

PISCATAWAY, NJ - If you've ever popped into the QuickChek in Piscataway on River Road, you've probably noticed Steve Evanowski and his unusual chair.

Evanowski is the Assistant Store Leader for the River Road QuickChek and he suffers from a rare muscular disease, eosinophilic myositis, which has gradually taken his strength over time. He works in a specially-designed, one-of-a-kind chair lift system that QuickChek created just for him.

Eosinophilic myositis was so rare when Steve was diagnosed with the illness at age 6 that the National Institute of Health did not have it listed in its rare diseases database. Doctors originally told his parents he would not live to age 20. But Steve defied their expectations. He went on to graduate from Piscataway High School and entered the workforce.

Evanowski was able to walk as a child and through his school years. When he first went to work for QuickChek he stood behind the register like other cashiers, occasionally leaning on the counter to rest. He would sometimes use crutches or a wheelchair to get around. Then in May 2002, someone accidentally bumped his foot, breaking his right tibia, requiring surgery and more than a year in bed to recover.

When Steve informed the company president he was ready to come back to work, QuickChek’s Director of Engineering Rick Wisler created a one-of-a-kind chair lift device — at a cost of more than $10,000 — allowing him to move comfortably behind the store’s counter without impairing other employees.

“There was never any talk of cost, but that we have an employee in need and we need to take care of him,” said Wisler.

The chair is a unique device, which includes a pulley system where Evanowski can move both horizontally as well as vertically behind the entire length of the store’s checkout counter.

And Evanowski is doing some giving back of his own.

For the third year in a row, Steve helped his store raise the most money out of QuickChek’s 147 store locations in New Jersey, the Hudson Valley and Long Island during the company's recent Check-Out Hunger campaign. QuickChek presented the Community FoodBank of New Jersey with a check for $148,500 last Tuesday, February 7. Evanowski’s Piscataway store led the way, raising $11,049.

“This is my way of giving back and asking people to help others in need just as so many people have helped me,” said Evanowski. "“I am happy, because this place gives me life."

(Photos courtesy Russ Mensch/Mensch & Company, Inc.).