AUBURN —  Friends of Jennifer Turner didn’t give up trying  to build her a special home when her first choice failed.

The Auburn woman, a quadriplegic, could be months away from breaking ground on a home designed to help her live independently — thanks to the help of the city of Auburn, the American Society of Civil Engineers and numerous local volunteers.

“It’s just one of those stories that tugs at your heart,” said Tammy Nosek, a civil engineer in New York state who grew up in Rumford with Turner. “It’s amazing how the community has pulled together to help this one individual.”

Turner has used a wheelchair since 1985 when a pulp truck hit her family car, leaving her with a broken neck and vertebrae, no use of her legs and limited use of her arms and hands.

Her situation worsened in 2006. Years of relying on her arms to wheel her chair and pull herself from room to room, combined with damage from her original injuries, left her with severe tendon damage in her wrists.

She lives in Barker Mill Arms — one of the Auburn Housing Authority’s properties — and must rely on family and neighbors to get in and out of bed. She needs an automated lifting system to be self-sufficient.

Since none of the Auburn Housing Authority’s properties will support the weight of that kind of lift, her only choice is to build a home of her own that will.

Turner qualified for the city’s first-time home buyer program in 2008. She worked with Auburn officials to find a low-interest mortgage backed by the federal Rural Development program and found a city-owned lot on Garfield Road.

That lot proved to be too difficult to develop. Nearby wetlands added to the cost, and the depth of city water and sewer lines ended up killing the plan.

“At the first property, those water lines were buried 16 feet below the street level,” said Gail Phoenix, Auburn’s community development coordinator. “It would have been an incredible expense just to dig down to them, and then the pipes would have been underwater. It just would have been too expensive.”

Turner and volunteers began looking for an alternative property, settling on a vacant, city-owned lot at 81 Oak Hill Road.

“It’s perfect,” Phoenix said. “It has city water and sewer right there, it’s on the bus route and it’s in the rural development zone, so she still qualifies for federal loans.”

Nosek went to school with Turner and belonged to the same Girl Scout troop. Nosek’s mother sent her newspaper clippings of Turner’s efforts to build her house.

“She was someone I remembered, and wanted to do what I could,” Nosek said. As the president-elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers, she enlisted the group’s help. Society volunteers drafted the design plans for Turner’s house.

Phoenix said the local volunteers have donated free labor and supplies. She estimated the entire project will cost $212,000. Fundraising efforts are still about $40,000 short, but they are still hoping to break ground in September.

“We might end up pulling back on the design, just doing some things less expensively,” Phoenix said. The design may dispense with a driveway, meaning handicapped-access vans wouldn’t be able to pull up to the house.

“She may have to go out to the street, if that’s what it takes,” Phoenix said.

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