
August Frank/Inland 360
Erin Holst and her mother, Cheryl (Holst) Teed, hold a copy of a Lewiston Tribune story from 1985, a few months after Erin's premature birth.
Accessibility Matters is an occasional Inland 360 feature highlighting stories from the disability community. July is Disability Pride Month.
Erin Holst has a milestone birthday coming up, but every birthday is a big one when you weren’t supposed to have any at all.
Holst was born Oct. 4, 1984, at 24 weeks gestation weighing 1 pound, 4½ ounces.
“They said ‘There’s no way,’ ” her mom, Cheryl (Holst) Teed, recalled. “With the knowledge and equipment they had at the time, she wasn’t viable.”
Except, she was.
Holst was flown from Lewiston’s St. Joseph Hospital (now St. Joseph Regional Medical Center) to Deaconess Medical Center in Spokane, where she spent the next four months in the neonatal intensive care unit. Her parents held her for the first time just after Christmas.

contributed photo
Holst and her mother, Cheryl (Holst) Teed, are pictured with their care team at Deaconess Medical Center in Spokane.
Longtime readers of the Lewiston Tribune might recognize this narrative from stories published when Holst came home from the hospital and when she appeared on a Children’s Miracle Network telethon — and from a poignant column, about a year after her birth, by former Tribune reporter David Johnson about the emotional rollercoaster of navigating children’s health issues. (One of those stories can be read here.)
Forty years later, health issues inform Holst’s life as a parent, a disability advocate and a care provider for children with disabilities.
Being a full-time single mom to Ethan, who she describes as “a rowdy 2-year-old,” led to some of her most recent advocacy when she learned new buses ordered by Asotin County Public Transit lacked car seats.
“Erin approached us and the city of Lewiston about getting car seats that were built in the buses so that we could transport little kids around,” Asotin County Public Transit Operations Manager Greg Gill said.
The agency had buses with car seats about 15 years ago, Gill said, but they weren’t used, and were phased out.
But Holst uses the transit system’s dial-a-ride service for work and appointments, since limited eyesight prevents her from driving, and she needs the seat for Ethan. And she said she figured other community members would need them too.
“Once Erin met with us, we changed the order on the buses and got those buses,” Gill said.
A fixed-route bus and a dial-a-ride bus with the built-in car seats arrived and are being prepared for use, he said, and another fixed-route bus with a car seat is on order.
Holst’s job currently consists of providing care and developmental services for children with disabilities in a home setting, and she worked for several years at a day care that served many clients with disabilities.
She attended Lewis-Clark State College and pursued a degree in social work for two years, “but then my vision started to take a dive — I had another retinal detachment in my only good eye.”
Not ready to give up, she completed an online trade school program focused on child development called Care Courses, obtaining a child development associate certificate, which she likened to an associate degree.
Her education and background serve her well, she said, as a volunteer with agencies like Asotin County Community Services and People First of Washington, in working to get a parent-to-parent peer support group established in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley and as president of the Lewis-Clark Early Childhood Program’s policy council.
She comes by her advocacy work naturally, she said, since her mom worked for many years for the group Idaho Parents Unlimited, which supports parents of children with disabilities.
And, she said, she does it because she can’t stand to see people fall short of their potential because of missing out on services they have a right to.
“It boggles my mind and it hurts my soul that so many are told ‘You can’t do this. You’ll never be able to do this,’ ” she said.
Early on, Holst’s challenges included fused vocal cords, a result of the tracheostomy (a tube inserted into her windpipe) that helped her breathe after she was born, and an eye disease called retinopathy of prematurity. Both of those conditions required multiple surgeries, she explained, including rebuilding her vocal cords and repairing detached retinas.
She’s had more than 100 procedures, by Teed’s count.
Holst speaks with a permanently low, strained voice and has no vision in her right eye and limited sight in her left. She remembers starting to lose her vision when she was 8 years old.
“That was very daunting growing up, dealing with that,” she said.
She went to every appointment wondering if she would end up being blind.
“They didn’t know,” she said.
Accessibility for low-vision children wasn’t good, Holst said, and her parents had to fight her being removed from the classroom to be educated separately from her peers. She remembers being given a microphone, which she said drew attention to her differences. And she used a magnifying reader — a glass bar that rested on the page so she could scan line by line.
“It was horrible,” she said. “Children made fun of me all the time.”
But she could speak, and she could see.
“They said she’d never talk,” Teed said. “She taught herself to talk.”
Holst earned excellent grades, graduating from Lewiston High School in 2003, and had a driver’s license for 14 years before sight issues led her to give up driving.
“These are all things I was never supposed to be able to have done,” she said, noting she also was told she wouldn’t be able to have children.
Worse than being told she couldn’t do certain things, she said, has been a few people’s reaction to her becoming a mother. While most have been supportive as she strives for the accommodations she needs to parent her son, she said some have suggested she should have “thought of how difficult it would be” before becoming a parent. That ableism, she said, is infuriating.
Holst’s slight stature (she weighs about 85 pounds) and small voice belie the strength and tenacity she regularly employs to stand up for herself and others in the community.
“Sometimes when you talk softly, people have a way of not paying attention,” Asotin County Community Services Director Cynthia Tierney said. “Erin has a way of fixing her eye through her thick glasses (and commanding attention). She’s tenacious.”
Holst sent these additional thoughts via email after an interview at her home:
"Go and do all the things society says you can’t. Be your best self and always advocate to find ways that work for you. If there’s one thing I feel I have contributed in my first almost 40 years, it's to show others that you can beat ALL odds and be amazing. I hope to instill this same drive in not only my community but my child and other children I work with. I also want to thank my family and some lifelong friends who have helped me continue to believe in myself. It takes a village!"
Stone (she/her) can be reached at mstone@inland360.com.
Resources:
Asotin County Community Services: asotincommunityservices.org.
People First of Wasington: peoplefirstofwashington.org.
Lewiston Transit System/Asotin County Public Transportation: ridethevalley.org.
Lewis-Clark Early Childhood Program: lcecp.com.