By refusing to be defined by his disability, Curran inexplicably landed in limbo with Pennsylvania officials poised to cancel the home health assistance he needs to live.
"I want to work. I'm meant to work . . . but I'm being held hostage by a system that does not want to see me succeed," Curran tells anyone who will listen - a group that so far includes two state legislators, scores of state welfare officials, and a half-dozen advocates equally baffled by his dilemma.
Here is a young man eager to get off Social Security disability and become a productive tax-, rent-, and copaying member of society. And the government's trying to stop him?
'Hot Wheels' steamed
When I meet Curran for coffee at Starbucks on Market Street, he wears a navy blazer, tan loafers, and a gray pallor of indignation. Only the scowl is unusual for a lighthearted guy who once called himself "Hot Wheels."
Curran was diagnosed as a baby with spinal muscular atrophy. The condition affects none of his organs but all his extremities. He can type 50 words a minute and analyze financial data with ease, but requires help eating, bathing, and dressing.
When he was a child, his family bore the burden. Home health aides covered by his mother's insurance assisted him at Temple until he aged out at 21 and qualified for 56 hours a week of aides and nursing care - a $185,000 bill paid with state and federal money.
"If I didn't work," he laments, "I could stay on this waiver forever."
But why do nothing when he could save the government money?
With a job, Curran qualifies for lesser, but similar, services at about half the cost through a state-run program that also requires him to contribute to his care.
