A young mother with terminal cancer had more than $1,000 stolen from her hospital room at Surrey Memorial Hospital in B.C.
A week ago, 23-year-old Sierra Blanchette-Parent won $300 on a Scratch ‘N Win lottery card, which she put in her wallet along with $700 in rent money she had just taken out from the ATM and $300 cash she already had. She kept her winning ticket and her money in her hospital room until her boyfriend could come to visit.
“I wanted to show him and then right away we realized it was gone,” Blanchette-Parent told CTV Vancouver on Friday. “We searched everywhere; literally the whole room and we don’t go very far.”
Blanchette-Parent had a baseball-sized tumour removed from her leg, but the cancer had already spread to her kidneys. The mother of a 2 ½-year old boy has been given a year to live. She said she wants to spend that time with her son, Preston, instead of stressing about stolen money.
“It sucked because nothing has been going right for us,” said Blanchette-Parent’s boyfriend, John Schoch. “It’s just one thing after another.”
This is not the first time that belongings have been stolen from a patient at the hospital. Only five months ago, rings were stolen right off the fingers of an 88-year-old woman.
According to hospital staff, there are no security cameras in wards for privacy reasons and Fraser Health, which oversees Surrey Memorial and other hospitals in the province, is telling patients to leave their valuables at home.
“The fact that somebody would come in and prey on an individual when they may be among their most vulnerable times in their life, it’s very troubling to us,” said Jacqueline Blackwell of Fraser Health.
Blanchette-Parent’s family has set up a GoFundMe page for the stolen money and to take care of her son, Preston, when she’s gone.
With files from CTV Vancouver’s Jon Woodward
