Our Story
It all started with a scare in the street
My mother had me when she was 42, my father when he was 57. I grew up knowing that my time with them was different: shorter, more valuable. She is everything to me, the one who gave me life and raised me despite my father's early absence. She is all I have left, and I will give my life for her, just as she did for me.
It all started with a fall in the street. A silly thing, we downplayed it. "I stumbled, I'm fine," she said. But that day something changed. Fear appeared. In her life and in mine.
From then on, the time between one fall and another became increasingly shorter, unlike my nerves, which were increasing. At home, in the bathroom, against the furniture: I saw that falls were repeated in certain places. And the worst, in everyday situations that cannot be avoided to keep her safe. Anyone who has been through this understands it well.
I learned to sleep with one ear open. Every bang made my heart stop. I would come running and there she was: on the floor, sometimes with blood. Pick her up, stop the bleeding, go to the hospital. And start over the next day.
I stopped going out. I left everything to take care of her and be close as much as possible, but it's inevitable: in daily life there are responsibilities and activities that force me to leave her alone, so I limited those moments as much as possible. My perception was that, when I wasn't there, she would get more nervous and fall more often in those brief periods of time than when I was with her. But that, extended over time, if you don't know how to control your mind—being a new, unexpected situation, without preparation or knowledge—it ends up overwhelming you. I couldn't live. She couldn't live.
As a result of that, and coinciding with a day when I absolutely had to go out, with my concern increasing, it occurred to me to leave her my bike helmet. "Here, mom, put it on." She didn't find it funny. I insisted: "Please, I can't leave calmly like this... if you fall, at least you won't crack your skull."
And, indeed, that same afternoon she used it for the first time: she fell against some wooden chairs. Without the helmet it would have been serious. With the helmet, just a scare.
Thanks to that fall and the effectiveness of the helmet, that night I slept relaxed and more peacefully again. And, after a while, seeing that it had protected her from a bad blow, she accepted it as her own and began to use it in her tasks around the house. We kept it that way for a while, until I managed to create SafeSeniors.
A bike helmet was not designed for her: it was uncomfortable, it attracted attention in the street. But it worked at home and was the key to peace of mind. I searched diligently in orthopedic stores, sports stores, department stores, and marketplaces for something that would be truly useful, and I was amazed to discover that what they offered was terrible: bad design, bulky, ugly, and flimsy, which didn't even halfway fulfill its function. Others, at an extremely high, almost prohibitive price. So I thought about it, I studied it, I evaluated it, and I saw that I had to create something better: a protective device with guarantees, inspired by the protectors of elite athletes, reducing volume without losing quality or safety in protection, and redesigned to be light, discreet, and comfortable.
Something that she would accept wearing, that I could test and verify its usefulness, and that would serve to help other families: to offer an effective protector that would restore calm to families like mine.
I don't sell helmets, or protectors... I sell peace of mind. That's what I needed night after night: to be able to sleep again knowing that, if the inevitable happens, the damage will be less.
— Gabino, founder of SafeSeniors