Sunday, September 11, 2011

STOLEN! A Disturbing Trend Hits The Disabled Community.

It started with a story.

Specifically, this story about a disabled McDonalds employee who was duped, and had $5000 worth of his Superman collection stolen. In a follow-up piece today, it was reported that comic fans all over the world were outraged, and had taken it upon themselves to collect rare pieces and autographs to give to Mike Meyer to boost his collection once more, what a sweet thing!

But it also reminded me of a theft that happened to myself at the beginning of the summer.

Now, i'm sure many of you have heard of Pokemon, an extremely popular game from Japan. They have cards, video games, cartoons, and collectables. From the time they came to the US, I have loved the Pokemon games from Nintendo. Your goal is to collect and train Pokemon, eventually hoping to collect them all. I have been playing my games for years, working hard to catch and trade pokemon, and attending events to get pokemon you can't find in the game. I play these games as relaxation when i'm having bad pain days, I've played them in the hospital and in bed after surgeries. I have put about 4-5 years and hundreds of hours of effort into these games.

This summer, they were all stolen from me.

The probable culprit? A well regarded nanny my parents had hired to watch my siblings. Though she came with great references, because I was home during the day, I could see how she treated my siblings. She called them brats, told them to shut up. She ate all of our food and then complained there was nothing to feed the kids, when we had two fridges and four freezers that were full. She gave my mom a list of food she wanted her to get for lunches, nothing but chicken nuggets, pizza, and juice boxes. She would take my siblings to the river and then sit on the other side of the path, reading a book, not even able to see the children. After telling my mom this, and she discovering things around the house that had been destroyed, the nanny was fired after less than a month.

Unfortunately, the theft of my games was not discovered for another few weeks. Why? Because after she'd stolen my games, some of which were gifts while I was in the hospital, by the way, she put my game case back in the exact position it had been it. As I had decided to take a break from my DS for a while, I didn't immediately notice.

So what all did she take?
6 games; Pokemon Pearl, Pokemon Platinum, Pokemon SoulSilver, Pokemon Black, Pokemon Ranger and Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia
4-5 years of work
Hundreds of hours of my time
Event-only pokemon, that you can no longer get, including:
Celebi
Shiny Suicune
Shiny Raikou
Shiny Entei
Spiky Pichu
Pikachu Colored Pichu
Shaymin
Arceus
Deoxys
Mew
Phione
Manaphy
Darkrai
Victini
Zoura
Zoroark

And the rare items Oak's Letter, Liberty Pass, Member Card, Secret Key, and made me miss out on the Enigma Stone.

I went to the local GameStop to see if she'd sold them, but the told me they couldn't let me see the games without a police report, store policy. I would later learn this was a lie.

I was and still am devastated by this. As someone who has trouble doing many things, these were what I was good at. Several of those games were gifts, some I'd purchased myself, but they all had meaning, and I will probably never see them again. It hurts to already have a disability, and then have someone take advantage of you because of it.

Unfortunately, there are people willing to take advantage of the less fortunate among us all the time, so beware!

EDITED TO ADD: If you have any questions, feel free to email me at: jelsen@hotmail.com

2 comments:

  1. There's a Pokémon community on LiveJournal that's really nice. If you share your post there maybe some folks would be able to help you at least get some of the event Pokémon back.

    I don't have any spare legendaries for Pokémon BW, but I have extras for the Gen 4 games.

    http://pokemon.livejournal.com - the community I mentioned.

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  2. Thanks for the info, I'd have to get the games again before that would be of any help, and I don't have the cash right now :/

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