I just wanted to alert people who don’t keep up with Memphis local news to this story: Girl’s wheelchair snagged by thief. A 5-year-old girl’s wheelchair was left unattended in a driveway for 5 minutes, and thieves came by and stole it. The little girl has spina bfida and used the chair as an extension of herself – she cheered in it, danced in it, etc. Needless to say, she was devastated and, according to the CA article, was crying all day long. She’s now being pushed around in a stroller and her parents aren’t sure whether insurance will cover a replacement. The chair was later recovered, completely dismantled, according to comments left on the CA story. The thieves had apparently tried to sell it for parts, and dumped what they couldn’t use from it.
If there are any plans to raise funds to get the little girl a replacement chair, please keep me in the loop (paul@paulryburn.com) so that my blog’s 1000+ daily readers have the opportunity to give. It’s not so much the money, it’s showing the little girl that most people in the community are the opposite of the pieces of garbage who stole her chair. So far I haven’t heard of any organized effort – someone mentioned Rock 103 in the comments but I didn’t see anything on their site (although I did see an interesting article about Led Zep touring without Plant under a different name next year). If anyone hears of a fund-raising drive for this let me know.