Vancouver family seek return of stolen cochlear implants
Credit to Author: David Carrigg| Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2020 03:23:40 +0000
Five-year-old Annie Matheson of Vancouver had her $60,000 cochlear implant sound processors stolen from a Surrey community centre over the weekend.
Caryn Matheson, mom of Annie, two-year-old Mae and five-month-old Lucy, said she arrived at the Guilford Recreation Centre on Saturday morning for Annie’s weekly swim lesson.
“I was a bit foolish,” Caryn told Postmedia News. “The coin slot was jammed and I was rushing with the kids to get Annie to the class. The kids were all over the place and I was managing them on my own, so I shut the locker and ran off.”
After Annie’s lesson — the only available in Metro Vancouver tailored for deaf children, with a sign-language interpreter on hand — the young family returned to the locker. Their dad, Dan, is site pastor at the Tenth Church in Kitsilano and was working at the time.
“I opened the locker and our clothes had been dumped out of our gym bags and the bags were missing,” Caryn said.
Inside the stolen bags was Caryn’s wallet, phone, car keys and the outside component of Annie’s cochlear implants (the ear pieces and the part that attaches to the side of the head behind the ear.)
“All the lockers around us were open. That’s when I realized my (car) keys were in my bag,” she said.
Mom Caryn and dad Dan with Annie, 5, at centre, Mae, 2, and Lucy, five months, at their home in Vancouver on Feb. 9.
Caryn said Annie was a little baffled by the theft and watched as her mom dashed out to the parkade, while recreation centre staff kept an eye on the kids. There were also other members of the deaf community there that had driven in from Vancouver for the lessons.
Sadly, the family’s 2014 Mazda 5 was missing and a busy Saturday turned into a painful one with waiting, calls to police, meeting cops and arranging a ride back to Vancouver.
“Annie’s reaction was bafflement more than anything,” Caryn said.
Annie is one of about 300 children in B.C. who have had cochlear implant surgery. Annie had hers at age three after getting a late diagnosis that she was profoundly deaf. The implant processors are worn all day and taken off for sleeping or any time in the water.
Caryn said sign language was crucial to Annie and her family as it offered a primary language that they had all learned — making them a “bilingual family.”
“It’s terrible that there was a theft, but even though she had cochlear implants it’s important in moments like this that she has sign language. That we have a language with her. American Sign Language is very important for kids with cochlear implants,” she said.
Caryn said she hadn’t heard back from the Surrey RCMP, but they told her it usually took a few days before stolen vehicles turned up.
Caryn said the sound processors were worth $30,000 each and the family’s insurance offered replacement of one pair. One of Annie’s sound processors had already been replaced, so they’ll hope to get another one on insurance. But they still expect to pay $30,000 for a second one.
In the meantime, the Australian-based Cochlear Ltd. has offered to send over a set of “loaners” until either the missing ones are recovered or an insurance claim is filed.
Annie starts kindergarten this fall at the B.C. School for the Deaf in Burnaby.