A young Santa Clarita resident is hoping to get back parts of her wheelchair, which were stolen over the weekend.
Abigail Ruano, 15, will be going into her sophomore year at Golden Valley High School this fall. Getting around the school would be hard, if it weren’t for the mobility scooter that functions as her main mode of transportation.
She’s used the scooter, known as a Go-Go — which is a wheelchair-equivalent but configured like a motor scooter — for the last two years, to aid her every step.
Abigail is unable to fully balance her body and also hard of hearing with an ataxia disability, but with the help of her Go-Go scooter, she’s managed to get around with more ease, her mother, Alba Ruano, said.
On Sunday morning, Alba Ruano said she noticed essential parts of the motor scooter were missing from the family’s mobile home park’s front porch. They had been there the previous day on Saturday, she said, but were nowhere in sight come the next day.
“We’ve never had anything stolen from our porch,” she said. “Three of the pieces were outside and I was charging the battery inside, and then I noticed two — the feet and the frame where the handles and battery are — were gone.
“The thief only took two pieces and left one piece,” she said. “It was kind of weird.”
The Ruano family filed a police report for property stolen sometime between Friday and Saturday, said Shirley Miller, spokeswoman for Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station. The incident is being classified as a grand theft with the scooter set at a value of $3,000.
The report’s status is still outstanding as of Tuesday, Miller said.
