VANCOUVER – A Surrey family is raising alarm bells about their experience at a Surrey fitness facility.
Matt and Christina Hendrick have a 21-month-old daughter. They have left her in the daycare at Steve Nash Fitness World at Morgan Crossing in South Surrey about 10 times in the last eight months.
On Monday evening Matt took his daughter with him when he went to the gym. He put her in the child minding area and went to work out.
When he returned 45 minutes later to get her, she was missing.
It turns out she had walked away from the area while other parents were picking up their kids and no one noticed.
When Matt ran outside he saw his daughter being led back towards the gym by a stranger. “A woman was walking her back to the gym holding her hand,” he said.
Matt was not able to speak to the Good Samaritan at the scene but he and his wife later connected with her on Facebook and she told them their daughter had made it to the Starbucks a few shops down.
“They thought she might have left the childcare and so they went to bring her back.”
Luckily the little girl is OK.
Matt said they have been in contact with the management at the Steve Nash gym in Surrey and with head office and they have apologized profusely for what happened.
Still, Hendrick says they are fortunate nothing happened to their daughter.
“I would attribute it to luck,” he said. “I mean, it could have went the other way. It’s a horrific situation and we got the best outcome.”
In a statement from The Kirk Group, on behalf of The Steve Nash Fitness Clubs, president Todd Ingledew and COO Chris Smith said:
Unfortunately our safety and security protocols that are in place to insure child safety and security were not followed. We take this matter very seriously and have initiated the following to ensure this does not happen again:
- Our engineering team is reviewing the physical entry/exit systems at each of our Kids Zones to assure security
- Along with our operations teams we are reviewing the current security protocols and will look at all possible means and measures to improve the safety/security for our child minding areas
- Our current child minding protocols are being reviewed with each and every team member
Again the safety and well-being of the children that visit our clubs is paramount – we cannot emphasize enough our desire to offer a safe and welcoming environment for them to enjoy.
The employee who was working in the daycare at the time has been fired.
Matt said they will never return to the facility, but they want others to be aware of what happened.
“She was really really close to the parking lot,” said Matt. “Anything could have happened.”
“I wouldn’t wish that feeling on anyone.”
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