Inside today
Cancer treatment at Christmas is tough. To then have the family’s gifts stolen is cruel, Kirsty Lawrence reports.
A woman whose car was loaded up with Christmas presents the night before her first chemotherapy session lost the lot when her car was stolen.
‘‘It just makes me so frustrated this can happen in broad daylight,’’ Danielle Bergerson, 32, said. ‘‘They are just so brazen.’’ Bergerson was at Speight’s Ale House in Palmerston North having dinner with her family about 6pm on Wednesday night when her Subaru Impreza was stolen from the car park.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer in November and had her first chemotherapy session on Thursday.
She was unsure how it was going to affect her health, so took her Christmas presents to the family dinner, leaving them in the boot of her car, as she did not know if she would see her family on Christmas Day to deliver them.
‘‘So it was the worst possible timing,’’ she said. ‘‘I had enough to worry about with my first chemo being the next day.’’
Bergerson said she was feeling OK after her first appointment and had attempted to just shut out what happened.
‘‘I had to try to block out the car thing from my mind and focus on the task.’’
She had already had a mastectomy, further surgeries and with her chemotherapy now starting, Bergerson said it had been a huge few months.
The car was covered by insurance but Bergerson said she wanted to use the incident as an opportunity to spread awareness of car thefts.
She urged people to keep an eye out for suspicious behaviour.
‘‘We work so hard to buy presents and stuff and nice things and people feel like they have the right to just come and take it.’’
It was not the first car she had heard of being stolen in the area of late.
Bergerson said it was a good idea to note down descriptions and number plates of vehicles that looked suspicious.
At the time her car was stolen a man sitting outside the bar witnessed it and got a good description of the car, which was handed to police.
Police are investigating.
Anyone with any information can contact Palmerston North police on 06 351 3600 or give information anonymously via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. REGION: A 13-year-old boy whose Christmas lights were stolen is overwhelmed by the support of strangers.