The Nerve of Some People!!

Being disabled is very stressful. On a good day it's a mild annoyance and only slightly painful. And on a bad day, well..., it can be so painful that you don't want to move out of bed much less leave the house to run necessary errands.  This makes having a mobility scooter a necessity, especially if the person either doesn't drive or the person does drive but does not have any other vehicle.  Mobility scooters are so wonderful because if walking is painful and difficult they can get you places without having to rely on anyone to come and take you.  To get a mobility scooter is not easy because they are not cheap.  I paid $800 for a used one.  A new mobility scooter can cost up to $4000.

Sometimes an agency such as Vocational Rehabilitation will buy a Mobility scooter for a client.  But if something should happen to the scooter then it's up to the client to take care of it.  So what happens if the scooter is stolen?  Nothing!  Who pays for it to be replaced?  You do!

Back on March 15th when I first started this blog entry we were dealing with the aftermath of D's scooter being stolen.  The picture of is a similar model to hers.  She and my DF were visiting her daughter for the afternoon and they decided to go off to the store.  When they came out my DF asked D where she'd parked the scooter. D just looked at him oddly and told him it was off to the side of the parking area near the dumpster.  That's when they all realized it was gone.  They called the police and a report was taken, but there was not much they could do at the moment.  D's daughter lives with her ex and they live in an apartment complex that used to be named Colony Woods and later earned the nickname "Felony Woods".  The complex has a new name now, but various tenants activities keep the old reputation fresh in people's minds.

This all happened on a Saturday.  D became very depressed because of the missing scooter and we had to call the medical supply store the following Monday to get the serial number and such.  And then that next Thursday she got a call from the complex's office saying that the scooter had been found by someone on the maintenance staff.  Why they didn't just call the police to let them know, I have not idea.  So D & M went over and got it and brought it back home.  Though when they got over to the complex they found that the thieves had not been kind: the headlight cover was smashed and gone (thought the actual light bulb was fine), the mirror was gone, the basket was gone, and the seat back was covered with a substance that M thought was mud but which turned out to be fecal matter and mucus (shudders).  D rode my scooter over and later said she was glad I had had a garbage bag in the basket because she needed to put it over the seat back in order to ride it home.

Near as we could guess is that the people who took the scooter had a first floor apartment because getting it up the stairs would have extremely difficult.  Plus, DF and D's daughter looked around the entire complex for it and couldn't find it which tells me that they put it right into their apartment to hide it.  Then, when they realized they needed a key to actually go anywhere on it, they tried to trash it.

People everywhere need to realize that a Mobility Scooter is not a toy; is a a valuable mode of transportation for those who have no other way to get from place to place and an invaluable key to independence for those who have difficulty walking because of arthritis, cerebral palsy, spinal cord injury, or any similar injury and who otherwise would have been housebound.  The people like D and I who use scooters need them to keep our independence, and sometimes our sanity.  To have our scooters out of commission for any reason or to have them stolen does more than rob us of transportation, it robs us of our ability to be members of the community.  And it robs of our feelings of safety.

I am not one who ever wishes ill of a person, but I hope with all my heart that whoever took D's scooter gets everything they so richly deserve in life.  That is an old curse I reserve for people who really need cursing. And that person really deserves it.