Elaine Touch is a beautiful 24 year-old college grad from Long Beach. She aspires for a career in public relations and she’s in the news. Why? Because the custom wheelchair that she relies on to live her life was stolen last month when she went to see Star Trek on a date.
That’s right. Some bonehead kids evidently stole the wheelchair from a woman with cerebral palsy while she was watching John Cho kick some alien butt. If I had seen this happen, I’d have kicked those kids’ asses to Romulus.
Elaine graduated from CSULB last year with a degree in Sociology. She’s had a number of cool internships, including the Mitsubishi Electric & Electronics USA’s summer internship program for young people with disabilities. Normally she watches movies in her wheelchair, but she wanted a better seat for this particular movie. She asked her date to carry her up to a better seat a few rows up and left her wheelchair a little ways away. By the time the house lights went up, her wheels were gone. Security tapes show footage of two minors rolling the wheelchair out of the theater. To get back to the car, her date had to push her out of the theater on a rolling computer chair.
If you think that this is some isolated case, well in the nearby town of Lakewood, 14 year-old Summer Kearney, also had her wheelchair stolen from a backyard patio at her home. What the HELL people?!?!?
Anyway, because of these two random acts of unkindness, there now is a “Wheelchair Donation Fund” to get these ladies in new wheels. The Wheelchair Donation Fund is being taken care of by the Disabled Student Services department at Cal State Long Beach and you can send your donations to:
Address: Disabled Student Services
Attn: Disabled Student Wheelchair Fund
Address: 1250 N. Bellflower Blvd., Rm 250, Long Beach, California 90840
Phone No. 562-985-5401
Email: [email protected] — Subject line: Disabled Students’ Wheelchair Fund
Let’s get these ladies rollin’ again.
*Please don’t fire me from writing headlines.
