The tragedies that happen in life can either defeat us, or define us.

So when Calvin Echevarria was feeling like life was going just the way he wanted it, that was the moment when everything changed.

Echevarria was working two jobs, had just bought a house and, along with his wife, was raising their three-year-old daughter.

But then the world got darker – and Echevarria found out he was going blind.

Diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy, he could no longer keep his job as a FedEx driver.

“At first, like, ‘Heck with the money, heck with the house we just got. I don’t care about that. All I care is about my wife and my daughter,'” he told CBS News.

I’m like, ‘How am I going to see my daughter grow?'”

Determined to not let his eyesight struggles deter him, Echevarria began working to be able to be independent and a good employee. He practiced walking with a cane. But he knew that he would need more than just that.

Calvin Echevarria shows his work setup at the Lighthouse Works office in Orlando, Fla. Photo by CBS

“I was on top of my game. I thought I had it all. I thought I was Superman,” he said. “That’s basically when life slapped me in the face and I went blind. And I couldn’t keep a job.”

Enter Lighthouse Works in Orlando, Fla. The company’s sole goal is to create jobs for those who are visually impaired and blind.

“Seven out of 10 Americans who are visually impaired are not in the workforce,” said Kyle Johnson, the president and CEO of Lighthouse Works. “And we knew that people who are blind are the most highly educated disability group on the planet. And so, very capable people, who want to work and contribute. So, we created Lighthouse Works to help them do that.”

Started in 1976, Lighthouse has grown from originally focusing on helping those who are blind and visually impaired to learn independent living skills, and now focuses on hiring those very same people to help run the company. Lighthouse now offers phone call center and supply chain services.

Echevarria works in the call center. He uses a system called JAWS which reads the computer screen into one ear, while Echevarria listens to customers in his other ear.

“The voice of the JAWS, for many of our call center agents, is going so fast that people like you and I don’t understand what it’s saying,” Johnson said. “I always say it’s faster than the voice at the end of a car commercial.”

Echevarria has gotten good at it. 

Calvin Echevarria at the Lighthouse Works office in Orlando, Fla. Photo by CBS

“Since I used to see, it was very hard for me to listen because I was more visual,” he said. “So, everything in my learning skills I’ve had to change from visual to being auditory now. It took a little while, but little by little, if you want something in life you have to reach out and grab it and you have to work on it. So, that’s basically what I did.”

One perk, Echevarria said, is that typically when someone calls in, they have no idea that he is blind. Another is that by working in a fully accessible office space, alongside people who share his disability, makes his job better.

It gives me a purpose. It makes me feel better because I can actually be proud of myself, saying, ‘I provide for my family,'” he said. 

Even his daughter has gotten a job at Lighthouse. For Echevarria, he had been worried he couldn’t be there for his daughter when he went blind. But now, thanks to her job with him, he’s her mentor.

“You know, little kids come to their parents, and all of a sudden when they become teenagers, they go away and they hardly ask you,” he said. “Now, we’re going back again to those days that my daughter use to come to me all the time. And I still feel needed.”

For a look at how Echevarria does his job, and how Lighthouse works, watch below.

Sources: CBS News | Orlando Sentinel