HAZLETON -- Neighbors in part of Luzerne County are asking who would stoop so low to steal a wheelchair from an older woman?
The chair was on the front porch and the homeowners discovered it missing Tuesday afternoon.
Anna Rose Matweecha, 87, has lived on Wyoming Street all her life and is shocked to learn she is a victim of crime. Someone made off with her wheelchair.
"What they did, they should get a job instead of stealing from people and they know I need that," she said.
Louise Matweecha, her daughter, lives nearby. She had her mother's wheelchair at her house when it was ripped off in broad daylight.
"I put the wheelchair on the porch, I went for gas and I came back in a half hour and it was gone!"
Across the street is the Holy Annunciation Church and St. George. Volunteers are working on their monthly fund raising dinner. They're just learning of the theft of the wheelchair.
"How low can you go? How bad off are you that you have to take something so vital to someone's daily living," asked Kathy Sabolchick.
"We're so highly unemployed over here and money is so hard, I am not surprised," said Annette Poppalardo of Freeland.
Hazleton Police ask anyone with information about Rose Ann's stolen wheelchair to give them a call.
"It was important to me. I would go out on the porch and sit out there when it's nice and I would go all around on the wheelchair, that's how important. It's like your right arm," Matweecha said.
The family tells me they will buy another wheelchair for Anna rose, but it's the principle of the theft which really bothers them.