Posted on 08/17/2010 5:37:20 PM PDT by bigheadfred
IDAHO FALLS - Sixty-two year old Vietnam Veteran Doug Stewart served in the U.S. Navy from 1956 to 1958, when he left with a medical retirement.
"I lost my left leg. We were off the coast, I got ran over by a jet." said Stewart.
In 1995, Stewart moved to the Idaho Falls area and got involved with the Disabled American Veterans in 1997 when he volunteered to drive their van. Since then he has driven more than a 175,000 miles between Idaho Falls and Salt Lake City, transporting Vet's to the V.A. Hospital for medical appointments.
"I'm on-call five days a week, you know anytime there's a veteran that needs a ride."
To make the runs, Doug relied on a chair lift on the back of his truck, until last week when it was stolen, while Doug was using the van.
"I took the van back up, then walked around the van to get in my truck, and I was like what the..."
It was right here in this parking lot, that the chair lift was stolen from Doug's truck. We're thinking that it was two individuals, that would have had to have taken about 45 minutes to get the actual chairlift off the truck right here, by removing the bolts out of the bed of the truck.
"It been parked up there two, three times overnight before it got stolen, so you know somebody seen it and wanted it."
Now, with no chair lift, Stewart is back to using crutches.
"Yeah, about five-ten minutes is all I can stand before my ankle really starts killing me. But if I've got to go somewhere where I got to be on my feet for awhile I just can't go you know."
Stewart also lost his wife about a month ago. Through it all, he's trying to stay positive.
"When you've got one leg, you learn to adapt and overcome you know. Right now I'm building me a ramp to put on the back of my truck so I can roll this up. But you know I'm still upset about it, but there ain't much you can do about it. No use being upset you've just got to adapt and go on." said Stewart.
Put the word out on the street. The locals and other resources exercise amazing power. Same thing happened in one of my old neighborhoods when a TV was stolen from a senior center. It miraculously reappeared two days later. :)
Pretty sure help will be found. I saw this on the local TV news. They said anyone interested in helping could contact the reporter at her station e-mail.
Hopefully the criminals will be apprehended.
Since this is a highly visible item, and this place is fairly small, they probably took it out of state. The hope would be someone saw them and can give the info to the police.
Welcome to FR.
Unfortunately, you may be right.
Thank you for your kind welcome. :-)
Let’s see. 62 years old means born about 1948 but was in the Navy in 1956, at age 8? Something wrong.
The story is legit. But you know reporters these days. They say to he!! with the 4th grade and go straight to Journalism School.
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