Perry Wagenaar was able to secure a replacement mobility scooter after his ended up at the bottom of Goat Hill, but Wagenaar still has questions of how the scooter ended up that way.--NEWS PHOTO KENDALL KING
kking@medicinehatnews.com
Questions still linger over how a mobility scooter parked on a section of Goat Trail in Crescent Heights ended up laying at the bottom of the hill destroyed.
Perry Wagenaar was returning from an outing on Feb. 12, when his mobility scooter had a mechanical failure.
“I was on my way home (on Goat’s Trail),” Wagenaar told the News. “You get past the park bench and the hill increases a little bit. Something mechanical snapped, so I parked my cart. It wasn’t running anymore, so I parked it behind the bench. I didn’t know what else to do; I couldn’t wheel it, so I walked home.”
Upon returning home, Wagenaar called Adapt Mobility, the store at which he purchased the scooter earlier this year, to request mechanical assistance. He received the information needed to reset the scooter, then returned to the site he parked it at around 30 to 40 minutes later, he estimates. However, when he arrived, the scooter was no longer parked beside the bench.
“I slowly walked down the hill and ‘Oh, there’s my scooter,'” said Wagenaar, as he spotted it lying at the bottom of the hill. “I tried to get down there, but too many thistles for me. So I walked back home again … There was nothing we could do.”
On Monday, Wagenaar phoned a tow truck company to retrieve the scooter, but it was too damaged to operate.
Without the scooter, Wagenaar, who has multiple sclerosis, a disease which affects his mobility and makes it so he is unable to operate an automobile, was largely confined to his home.
“Having MS, I need the cart,” he said. “I can walk, but I can’t walk long (distances). If I go for a long walk today, I’m on this couch the next day; my legs are sore. It’s a funny disease … (The scooter) got me around … It was my legs.”
As it could no longer operate, the damaged scooter remained in possession of the tow company, which reached out to Allen Jacobs, a local welder who frequently works with mobility scooters, to get his take.
“Willie’s Towing called me to say he had a damaged scooter for me to look at.” Jacobs, the founder of Jacobs Welding Ltd. and Pedal Tractor Farm, told the News.
“It rolled several times,” Jacobs assessed, “flattened one tire, bent the arm rest, destroyed the high-beams and buckled the basket, flipped the battery upside down and broke the plastic housing.”
Upon inspecting it, Jacobs also noticed the scooter had been taken out of gear at some point, something which requires the brake to be squeezed.
Both Jacobs and Wagenaar are curious as to whether the scooter rolling down the hill was an accident or if it was an act of deliberate vandalism.
“I’m not saying anybody did it. Maybe something else happened, I don’t know,” said Wagenaar, “but with it being parked right behind that bench…”
Wagenaar hopes if it was a deliberate act, the vandal will take time to reflect on the effects it had.
“If somebody did this, they turned my life upside down,” he said.
Beyond the emotional burden losing the scooter caused, it added financial strain for Wagenaar. Some of that was alleviated by Jacobs, who provided Wagenaar with a rental scooter, which Wagenaar is grateful for.
“We met Allan at the right time,” he said. “He’s been a godsend to us.”
Jacobs remains suspicious about the damaged scooter and hopes, if it was a deliberate act, someone will come forward with information about the vandal.
“(I) was upset at his story. I hope if someone reads this they may be able to solve the (mystery) of how his scooter ended up at the bottom of the hill,” Jacobs said.
