A custom made medical hoist, that was stolen last week from a Ladner apartment building, has been found stripped of parts in a Surrey alleyway.
The hoist, valued at around $10,000, was crafted by Wayne Davis for his good friend Mike Hamill to get him back on his boat in a Ladner marina for the first time since a boating accident left him a paraplegic three years ago.
According to Kristy Neville from Delta police, the hoist was discovered by a member of the public over the weekend and has since been retrieved by DPD and Surrey RCMP.
“The hoist was not damaged, but was taken apart and pieces are missing,” said Neville. “DPD is continuing to investigate.”
Davis has seen photos of the recovered hoist and will be picking it up at Surrey RCMP sometime on Tuesday with fingerprint work now completed.
“We are pretty stoked. We think there is enough there to work with to re-build it,” said Davis, who works for Lancaster Mobility, a medical supply company. “I can definitely see there are some integral parts missing, but I can probably resource those and put it back together.”
Davis estimates it would have taken the thieves about 90 minutes to strip the hoist down and leave it “in about 100 pieces.” He is concerned about water damage to some of the electrical parts since it was left out in the rain.
Extensive coverage of the stolen hoist by media outlets has resulted in many reaching out to Davis wanting to help him out. That includes a GoFundMe campaign that was launched late last week, which has exceeded its $10,000 goal.
“The outreach was unbelievable,” added Davis. “We had engineers ringing us saying they would help build us another one. Collaboratively, it could be quite a good thing putting another one together or rebuilding this one.
“We do want to either build another one or offer this one to the community as well. One guy reached out who is associated with Variety Club and he thought it might be a good piece of equipment to drop it off to places that otherwise would have challenges getting into boats in the water.”
