Marilyn Merrett couldn’t believe a thief would be so callous as to steal a wheelchair.
“It’s pretty damn sad, as far as I’m concerned,” she said. “Don’t we live in a better society than that?”
And now she’s asking that whoever took it, brings it back.
Last Wednesday, she left the chair at the front of her house, with some patio furniture.
“It was probably just someone looking to make a quick buck,” she said.
Veterans’ Affairs Canada bought the chair for her father, a Second World War veteran who is now 88.
But it has also been getting a lot of use from her daughter Heather, who has been fighting brain tumours. She first had them when she was just four years old.
Now 28, Heather is the mother of two children, aged eight and six; and the tumours have returned. Through 2009, she had seven brain surgeries.
Merrett looks after her, and she needs the wheelchair.
Replacing the stolen chair would cost Merrett an estimated $1,800, but thieves will likely get a small fraction of that.
“It’s one of those extra twigs on the camel’s back,” said Merrett.
