U-46: Wheelchair stolen from Elgin High student

Elgin High School senior Natalie Chastain was looking forward to upcoming visits to Southern Illinois University and the University of Iowa, where she hopes to study architecture.

Those visits may have to wait. While Natalie was preparing to go to school Friday morning, somebody snatched her manual wheelchair from the driveway of her home at 241 Hoxie Ave., according to her mother.

While Natalie also has a mechanized wheelchair, it is large and unwieldy. Her mother says it is too heavy for her to take into the house and may not be able to navigate the tight spaces in the home.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," Mary Chastain said. "This is the worst thing that's every happened."

Natalie's wheelchair may have fallen victim to a recent rash of metal thefts. Driven perhaps by economic pressures, Elgin police have seen an uptick in opportunistic criminals stealing manhole covers and other metal objects to sell to scrap dealers.

"There has been an increase in us witnessing that," Elgin police spokeswoman Sue Olafson said. "There is a definite market in scrap metal."

Chastain says she was helping her daughter get out of the house and into her mechanized chair when the manual chair, which she had taken out the same morning to load onto the bus with her daughter, went missing from the driveway. It all happened in about four minutes.

Until the wheelchair is returned or replaced, Natalie, who has cerebral palsy and can communicate only with the aid of a computerized device that attaches to her wheelchair, may have a tough time completing work for her classes, which include calculus and other advanced subjects.

"She's going to have to do her homework in the garage ... that's just wrong," Chastain said. "You just don't mess with disabled children."

Chastain described the wheelchair as bright purple, with a black seat and a mount for Natalie's communication device.

If you have any information on the incident, you can contact Chastain at (224) 238-3406, Elgin Area School District U-46 at (847) 888-5000 ext. 4160, or Elgin police at (847) 289-2740; or you can leave an anonymous tip at (847) 695-4195.