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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
No way to travel after wheelchair ramp stolen
Submitted photo Tanis Roberts, seen with mom Andrea Roberts, is housebound after thieves took her ramp on Monday.
Tanis Roberts is a 20-year-old quadriplegic who depends on her wheelchair ramp so she can travel in her family's van.
The portable aluminum ramp was stolen from her family home in Portage la Prairie on Monday, and her family is irate.
Tanis has epilepsy and cerebral palsy, and uses a wheelchair that weighs about 90 kilograms.
The family takes the portable ramp with them so they have a way to get her in and out of the van.
"(Her father) puts Tanis into our van, and then we use the ramp to put her wheelchair into the van," said Andrea Roberts, Tanis's mother.
"Why would someone need it? Or would they sell it? I have no idea why they would take it."
Andrea said the family got the ramp about eight years ago. It went missing Monday from the side of the home.
The ramp was worth more than $1,000, she said, and the family didn't have to pay for it because it was purchased through a program designed to support families who have kids with disabilities.
Andrea and her husband, Perry, have four children.
"I don't think we'd be able to purchase one for a really long time," said Andrea, an accounts payable clerk. Her husband is an office technician.
"The money we make is already used for living expenses."
The family said they contacted the RCMP about the incident and were told to contact a local scrap-metal business to see if had been turned in there. But it hadn't.
Tanis's quality of life will be curtailed without the ramp, Andrea said.
"I don't think she really realizes what it means yet," said Andrea.
"I'm really upset because if we don't have that ramp, we can't go on our family trips.
"Because we normally have to take that in order to take her wheelchair, and she needs her wheelchair with her."
gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 4, 2012 A7
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