Maybe I’m too trusting. Maybe I’m too naïve. Maybe I just wanted to believe that no one would ever steal a stroller.
This was the scenario: I was shopping in my busy East Vancouver neighbourhood on a rainy Sunday afternoon, rolling from shop to shop with my 19-month old toddler Joshua in his stroller. Fully aware that some stores are too small and crowded to even think about invading with a circa-2015 stroller, I tried to be courteous by parking it outside. I tucked the stroller neatly under the awning beside the door, then took my son up into my arms and entered the store.
I was inside for five, maybe seven minutes tops. When my son and I emerged, to my shock, our stroller was gone.
I immediately glanced up the street, then down. It was nowhere in sight. I had that helpless feeling of being a victim of theft.
Then it hit me: that was a ridiculously expensive stroller. My wife was going to kill me.
Stroller theft is apparently nothing new, but the shock of parents who have one ripped off, be it from the front porch, the backyard, or the sidewalk, seems universal.
We’d never leave our bikes unlocked or exposed, but we never think to lock our strollers, often of equal value.
Vancouver police have assumed that strollers, like bikes, are sold to pawn shops or on Craig’s List (some of the mega-strollers retail for $1,000 and up). The cops highly recommend using their Log It Or Lose It app to photograph and document your expensive items… like strollers.
I hadn’t logged it and I sure as hell didn’t want to lose it. Dashing out into the rain, I bounced down the sidewalk with my son and our groceries to the nearest corner, rubbernecking in all directions. Across the street and headed in the opposite direction, there it was: the beige canopy of our stroller being wheeled away by a man and his adolescent daughter.
“Hey!” I yelled over traffic. “That’s our stroller! What are you doing?”
They either didn’t hear me or ignored me.
“Stop! THAT’S MY STROLLER!”
This time the man turned around and saw me, as did several other people on the street. Let me tell you, it’s pretty easy to take back a stroller when you’re actually carrying the baby that goes in it.
“I didn’t know who it belonged to,” the man said guiltily.
“But I was inside the store for five minutes!” I replied.
“It was just sitting there,” he answered, as if that somehow justified taking it. The man’s daughter avoided eye contact, staring at the ground, as if both the stroller and a piece of her innocence had been stolen that afternoon. I found myself wondering in the moment if they somehow needed the stroller more than I did.
Still, I pulled the stroller back and spun it around. We parted ways as my heart pounded in my chest.
“Sorry!” he yelled back.
At least he was apologetic.
There are indeed plenty of stroller locks on the market, but I still won’t use one. Call me naïve, call me stupid, but if our stroller disappears again, I’ll hope that who ever takes it really does need it more than me.
