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A Regina boy with special needs was thrilled with the return of his treasured stolen tricycle on Tuesday night, in a gesture that restored his family’s faith in humanity.
Sandi Urban describes her son Wade’s adult tricycle as “his little piece of heaven,” which was why he was devastated when it was stolen.
Wade is 16 but has the cognitive development of a three-year-old. Urban said he spent years watching his older siblings and wishing he could do the same things they did.
“So when he got old enough to fit an adult tricycle, it was just the perfect fit for him. That’s the one thing that he can do that he feels just like everybody else – that he doesn’t need anybody’s help to do,” Urban explained.
When someone cut the lock off his tricycle and stole it over the weekend, Wade was confused and sad, wondering why people would be so mean.
His protective older siblings took to Facebook to express their frustration and ask the public to keep an eye out for their brother’s bike. The post was shared more than 2,000 times and pretty soon people started contacting the family reporting that they had seen a similar bike on the streets. On Tuesday evening, the family got a call from someone asked to remain anonymous saying the bike had been found and they wanted to return it.
“Wade smothered the gentleman with hugs and kisses when his bike was delivered to the house last night,” Urban said.
THANKYOU EVERYONE who shared posts/tweets… drove the streets…. and FOUND AND RETURNED Wades bike. You are amazing pic.twitter.com/kssHQle3fl
— Sandi Urban (@SandiUrban) June 13, 2018
She was surprised by the public response to the post as people began to reach out to their family offering to buy a replacement bike while others searched the streets for it. She noted the post wasn’t really intended to get media attention or even to find a replacement, it was an expression of frustration and an advisory to people to watch their belongings.
While she is an optimist who views the world with cracked rose-coloured glasses, Urban admits when raising a special needs child sometimes she doesn’t see the best in people and once in a while she gets down.
“This was just a reminder that there are so many good people that quietly go about their day, and when they see a place they can help, they do,” Urban commented.
While the return of the bike means so much to her son, she said the response to their post carries a wider message about how simple acts of caring and kindness strung together by many people can achieve a lot of good.
“In the grand scheme of things, it’s just a bike and in the scheme of everything that’s happening in our community, if we could take that same energy that people put into looking out for Wade and his bike, then our community would be amazingly brilliant.”
