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Vivar means “to live” in Spanish, and Jimmy Vivar has done plenty of living in his quarter-century on this Earth.
Vivar, a Costa Mesa resident, was born with an degenerative eyesight condition called Retinitis pigmentosa. He has very little sight, a field of vision that’s like a pinhole, and extreme difficulty seeing at night. He usually walks with a cane.
“Sometimes people ask for percentages,” Vivar said. “I don’t exactly know what the percentage of vision would be, but I do have problems with peripheral vision. Playing sports or Frisbee would be hard, seeing things from further away and coming close into my field of vision. Being able to navigate new areas is also difficult. Figuring out how deep a set of stairs are, or in a new place, where a fire hydrant might be, for example. And if there’s a white fire hydrant and a white building behind it, I’ll probably miss that.”