INDOT Blocking Driveway Blind Vendor Uses To Restock Machines At Rest Stop
(CBS) -- A blind vendor at a Northwest Indiana rest stop says she feels hurt by what the Indiana Department of Transportation is doing: denying her easy access to refill her own vending machines.
For 35 years, Betty Tetzlaff has been totally blind. She's had a vending machine contract at the I-65 rest stops near Roselawn since 1986. And she has had some issues with the Indiana Department of Transportation.
"They actually just don't like me out there. And I don't think they like any of the blind vendors at the rest areas. There's always issues, OK?"
INDOT Blocking Driveway Blind Vendor Uses To Restock Machines
72-year-old Tetzlaff says she's been denied use of a 25-foot driveway at the rest stop for the past two weeks: a driveway that would make it easier for her and her sighted husband to get closer to the machines to unload supplies.
"Especially one day it was raining all day. Can you imagine? You got paper boxes with chips in it and paper boxes with candy. And before you could get 25 feet when it's raining, your boxes is wet. It's a mess."
Tetzlaff says she paid for the concrete for that driveway. And now she says INDOT is demanding she show proof of that - a receipt from the late '80s.
"Demanding a receipt from 25 years ago? That just don't sound right to me," she says.
A spokesman for INDOT says they had to make some repairs, but it was unclear when Tetzlaff would have use of the driveway again.
