Surrey mom, Tina Keefe, has enough on her plate as she prepares for her four-year-old daughter’s third open heart surgery at B.C. Children’s Hospital Wednesday.
But now she has to scramble to cover added hospital expenses – like parking and gas – since a bottle drive she organized was robbed last week.
Her daughter, Madelyn, was born with a congenital heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which is a rare congenital heart defect leaving the left ventricle of the heart severely underdeveloped – Keefe describes it as “life with half a heart.”
Keefe, friends and family spent the last three weeks collecting bottles to raise money for Madelyn’s upcoming hospital stay, which could be as long as three weeks, costing up to $315 in parking, she said.
It was on her way to work Friday that she noticed more than half of those bottles were stolen from her home.
“It was really early in the morning and I just kind of glanced over and noticed a big gap between the bottles we had lined up in the garage,” Keefe said. “Somebody had come in in the middle of the night and taken all our bottles that we worked so hard to get.”
“We must have had more than 20 bags lined up in the garage and more than half of them were gone.”
Keefe estimated at least $150 worth of bottles were stolen.
“It would have helped us out, we both have to take time off work, my husband and I, because we have to be with her – she could be in the hospital up to three weeks,” she said. “Those bottles would have helped with that cost (of parking).”
Keefe said she was upset and angry that something like this could have happened in her quiet neighbourhood – so she turned to some local Facebook groups to vent her frustration. Little did she know it would garner more than 160 comments with people from Surrey, to Aldergrove, to Langley offering help.
“The response was overwhelming, it was really nice to see that people are willing to help out,” she said.
But with Madelyn’s surgery in less than three days, she’s worried she won’t collect enough.
“That doesn’t leave us a lot of time,” she said. “It’s starting from scratch basically.”
For more information or to help Keefe, visit her Facebook page.
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